Lauren’s Story

I started training in competitive sports from a young age, starting with swimming, rowing and now powerlifting. Training competitively is all I know with the gym and it has taught me valuable things like valuing my health, nutrition, time keeping and prioritising the important things in my life.

However, it’s hard to turn off constantly feeling the need to push myself. Over-training was a habit id slip into as it was the only sense of control I felt - thinking more training would mean getting better, which wasn’t the case as it only prevented my mental health from getting better. It was easy to let sports take over my life, using it to combat all the bad thoughts in my head, but there’s a lot more to life than constantly fighting a battle.

I am slowly learning to know when I need to step back and enjoy doing something other than the gym and not letting my life be dictated by it. If you enjoy your work, it will feel like you’ve never worked a day in your life, and the same goes for sport.