There are countless movies about sporting heroes, fictional and real life, that overcome adversity. Books have been written about legends of their respective games that came from nothing to make something of themselves. This is NOT one of those stories, but one of somebody just finding their way, and it all started with some sport at school and how exercise helped overcome some hurdles to be just a little bit more independent.
Having been born with a visual impairment that left me legally blind and a doctor telling my parents that I would never read or write left quite a bumpy road ahead. With a mother who overcame the hurdles on her side and pushed me to do more than feel sorry for myself, and a school specially made for visually impaired people, there was a start but it was slow. I was never the tallest and a little bit chubby, while in boarding school for most of the week and there weren’t that many options for physical activity in a school for kids with visual impairments. These factors made it hard for somebody who ate like they hadn’t eaten all day (even though I did) to stay healthy and deal with fat-shaming because nobody could be shamed for their disabilities. After all, everybody was disabled.
I was always a fan of sports, especially cricket and rugby, but my school did not have them, not even blind cricket. The school did have a grass running track like most schools would but it also had a 25m Olympic-style laned swimming pool. We had the usual annual inter-school athletics meets but I never knew you could do more so it was only when I was about fifteen that I just started joining my fitter friends on the running track when it wasn’t even athletics season anymore.
I enjoyed having something to do in the afternoon, having mini competitions with my friends on the track and the bug got me. Not only did I develop a competitiveness to do better than they or I did, but I saw my body change and become stronger. Now, we know the way you look is the least important thing in life but when you’ve got low self-confidence, seeing those little changes makes you feel better.
Now, we can go on about how I somehow got into Stellenbosch University and eventually got my degree in Sport Science where I learned bout everything the body does to be better. I made friends who taught me how to lift weights and lessons that taught me more about the different sports I loved but knew little about. However, we want to know how sport and exercise helped me reach for more rather than sit around and say that I can’t do that one thing or exclude myself from living a more independent life.
Self-confidence
At the most basic level, sports can boost your self-confidence to heights you can barely imagine. It can be as basic as seeing changes in your body and feeling better about how you look in a mirror. But, with myself, I was seeing changes in my performance. Realizing that putting in hard work that was also fun provided me with confidence when I saw the running times go down and the weight I lifted increase. Not every person needs to be a world-class athlete but whether it’s in the gym or just going for a run and going a bit faster, those small wins made me feel more confident and made me work harder to get better next time.
Personally, looking good made me feel confident, but that was in the beginning. The confidence I got through exercise made me more comfortable to step outside of the disability box I put myself in and try new things in the outside world like going to university on my own, building friendships out of nowhere, trying different types of sports and even karting, which somebody with my eyesight probably wouldn’t usually attempt.
Discipline
My friends motivating me to start running with them was how it all began but exercise is a great, if not the best, way to build discipline. When you start seeing the small changes in your body and performance, you want to do a little bit better each time. Through the constant work on myself, I learned about what discipline was and how when I kept showing up to the gym or work, I would achieve my goals more consistently.
Showing up and putting the work in every day whether I wanted to or not became a habit so, it doesn’t feel like work anymore and I can just keep moving forward and build on what I did the day or week before. You don’t have to wake up at 4 am every morning to go to the gym or sit at your desk, but having some form of routine will help you build discipline.
I used my confidence and discipline to set new goals like going out further into the world, including running long distances on the road without any assistance. I used it to build a career in industries myself and my parents were told would never be possible.
Goal-setting
For most of us, work is not what we want to do during the day, but if we turn it into a bit of competition with ourselves, we can get through it more easily.
Setting goals in the gym while following a program taught me how to set goals for the workday as well. We can all write our day’s jobs into our diaries but what about setting goals similar to our workouts? Being able to do a specific job in less time isn’t a top priority but setting the goal of having fewer errors for a piece of work will automatically make it more efficient. It can even be as simple as finishing longer tasks before shorter ones later in the day when your focus tends to dwindle.
Set goals at work like you would in the day’s workout or training session, and you might see changes coming.
Making unlikely friends
Whether watching a game with friends, being part of a team, or running a race, I’ve met all kinds of people. I met people to nerd out with when it came to our favorite sport and got to train, and compete, with all kinds of amateur and professional athletes. I even got to write about training for a World’s Strongest Man finalist and Britain’s Strongest Man when the world was falling apart in 2020/21.
Sport has taught me that disabilities don’t matter because as long as you’re doing something to do better, you’ll always have people around who support you, and provide unlikely opportunities.
Along with a strong family behind me who never let me do less than I was capable of and getting my sweat on a couple of times a week, I learned lessons to carry with me for my entire life to come. It helped me become more confident and disciplined, helped me make friends, and gave me a career that some would have thought impossible from the day I was born.
Cyclops Creative 