Out of my comfort zone and loving it

This year I decided to get out of my comfort zone and get back to playing community sport by joining my local AFL team, the Toowoomba bombers. I had no idea what it would be like, in all honesty, I was quite nervous. When I first went to my very first coaching session because I actually have not played any kind of organised sport since 2011. So it's been 10, years and it's certainly been a lot longer than that since I played it on a level where you get to travel around playing other teams, and you have to have sort of proper structure.

As you may be aware from following me on social media last year I decided to step away from teaching again at the end of 2020 which meant I would be living and working at home again. Doing all of that solely meant that I could really get trapped with no socialisation especially if I didn’t make strong boundaries between where work starts and ends or make an effort to connect with people on a weekly basis. It’s one of the pitfalls of being a high performer and a business owner, you can get stuck in the trap of simply working and doing little else if you allow it. After experiencing what that was like when I first returned from London I wanted to step back into social sport again for my health benefits and to fill the social void I know I would feel being my own boss. So far being associated with the South Toowoomba Bombers has been fantastic for that. I really wanted to share with you what it's been like me learning how to play AFL because it's the definition of getting out of my comfort zone and I’m absolutely loving it!

When I first started, I was going to footy training with these were the thoughts going in my head: ‘I'm 35, last time I played a sport that had a big field with soccer and I was fast. Since then I've had knee surgery, not that long ago, in fact September last year. I haven't sprinted for several years because of the injury to my knee and having to wait for the surgery. I'm not fit in comparison to what I used to be a couple years ago. I watch AFL, but I don't know the positions in terms of where I would run around, I'm just a very good Brisbane Lions fan who can yell about what the rules are and what you should be doing what you shouldn't be doing with a few things that I have no idea about how is this going to go.’

I could recall back when I was a HPE teacher needing to teach people how to play AFL, bouncing the ball and and it not coming back to me and then having to play videos to show off the skills. So my first thought was going to a new club where I didn't know anyone and trying to bounce a ball and it hitting me in the face or somewhere else, similarly embarrassing, but natural fact it's been really excellent. There has been a massive benefit to being a raving fan of the Brisbane Lions for several years. Surprisingly there are some things like positions on the field, the corridors, rules and terminology that I’ve learnt from well over 10 years of being an AFL fan that has helped me to be able to understand what I need to do on the field because I've watched so many games. But the beauty is I'm not skilled and maybe you'll laugh at this, but the fact that I'm not skilled and I have to learn it all excites me to no end.

Years ago when I was playing soccer, I started when I was 10 and was playing representative levels by the time I was 12, I was dedicated to becoming a professional soccer player and playing premier league. While I didn't become a professional soccer player I did play Premier League and was lucky enough to have a sponsor pay for my season which was virtually unheard of back then. During that time I learnt a lot about myself in terms of intelligent gameplay, knowing in your head roughly where you need to be a couple of plays ahead, it was incredible. I loved it but soccer became very serious for me, I was always focussed on my next goal that is until I got a injury that ended my ‘career’ in the sport. I was told I could not play soccer again because the ankle to ankle contact.

I looked to push the boundaries as much as possible so that I would be mentally stimulated in a game and ended up playing basketball, committing to lots of gym sessions, rehabilitation exercises and when I moved to the UK and returned back home got into hiking and boxing BIG time. I spent a lot of time building up the strength in my ankles, developing trust in my ankles and doing training again that I loved the most- plyometrics. So it’s been really interesting to add the skills of soccer, basketball and general training together to help me play AFL. I have no idea how the first game will go and I’m very excited about being unskilled and the possibility that I may know what I am meant to do and it may or may not actually happen. I think this excites me because there is no pressure. I don’t actually have to perform amazingly, I can just turn up and enjoy myself.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a high performer, I want to be exceptional at AFL as soon as possible. But the reality is, I'm just not going to be so I can enjoy it, I can have fun. I can let go. I am not thinking about the possibility of getting drafted for the Brisbane Lions in a year's time and I haven’t thought about that sort of thing since I was 11. I’ve always been on track to thinking about ‘where will this go?’ So the beauty is I can really just enjoy the movement and the fun that I have in learning new skills.

I think people often forget that when they're going to exercise or when they're going to start playing a sport or doing something different; there is a lot of fun in learning something new and finding that you've had success with it. This can sometimes be taken away by our massive desire to build habits or to achieve our goals.

At the moment I can happily say that I have commentated on the way that I have tackled a training, that I have pushed my knee too far to the point where I could not run for a little bit, that my knee is getting better and it's building strength more and more each time, that I have gone from being dodgy with my hand passes to progressively getting better, that I've uncovered that in AFL terms my dodgy left foot is actually the best side of my body in terms of kicking and that my right leg is a bit gumby when it comes to accuracy, go figure.

I can see overlaps from the sports that I used to play before. In terms of the way you can catch the ball, you know goalkeeping days from when I was 14 years old, that basketball intercepts are helpful in AFL too. But I can also see that things I'm terrible at. I'm going to be able to continue to learn which is great.

I laugh when I tackle people, I get nervous about hitting people around the head, and all of that I know once I'm in a game situation will disappear as I get serious about stepping into that role that I know so well which is the high performer role, which is that no matter what thing I'm doing, I want to succeed at it so my brain gets into that gear and just turns it up a notch to make me deliver the results I would like to see for myself.

Anyway, I wanted to share this with you because no doubt there's gonna be more things that I learn as I go throughout my AFL season with the South Toowoomba Bombers but I also wanted to encourage you- maybe you haven't signed up for any sport or haven't chosen to do anything different yet this year, and you feel like you're missing something that you need.

For me, I knew I needed to have social interaction because I'm a business owner that works at home. Signing up for a sport would give me both my exercise and social interaction I need, maybe you need that too? I encourage you to look outside your comfort zone and see what it's like. Be 100% honest. Yes, I'm a confident person, but I was still nervous when I turned up for that first coaching session. I think I said sorry maybe 25 times in one session because that's how nervous I was, not because there was actually a need to say sorry. But the point was, I knew I was going because I was going to gain the socialisation and the fitness that I needed and I'd learned something new about myself every time I tried to do a new skill. This was (and is) more important than feeling uncomfortable for the first time.

I'm really pleased to say now that I'm getting a bit more involved in the club. I have a couple of girls that will start conversations with me when I get to training and I'm starting to really feel part of the Bombers family, which is really cool. I know that if you've been thinking should I do something like that? Should I join a social sport or a competitive sport ? What about my age? Just let it go and turn up to your first training. Once your first training session is done, you'll start to get a feel for if you want to go back again, and then go back and enjoy it, and share with me how it feels. Because honestly, I'm one of the oldest people in my team, but I don't feel it. I love having fun with it and I'm getting more than what I aimed to get from participating in playing AFL so far. I can't wait for our first game, I can only imagine how funny it's going to look for people with me not knowing what I'm doing, but I'm really looking forward to it and I know you will too. So fill us in if you do something new like me this year. I'd love to hear about it.