Healthy habits never killed anyone!

Sharing a bit about my passions for sports and my daily routine. For the more lazy ones, hopefully you will find it as a useful inspiration to start incorporate sports in your daily routine too!

I have always practiced sports from when I was a child. In general, I feel that the right approach to really appreciate sports is to try to find what you really enjoy doing and, to a certain extent, what you are reasonably good at.

For example, I really do not like sports involving balls from tennis, football, volleyball ... I am not really good at it! I tried them when I was a child and did not enjoy them, so tried to look for something that I could like and be good at and dancing was the answer, especially modern dancing and hip hop.

I practiced dancing for almost 10 years until high school homework started to became heavy and, being a perfectionist (or you do something very well and with diligence or you quit in my mind!), I decided to stop dancing.

I always tried to keep doing activities, going to courses in the gym and running sometimes, but not as constantly as now.

Probably I discovered my passion - and almost addition :) - to sports a few years ago. First with running and then yoga: let me talk a bit more about these 2 amazing sports.

Running

Running was not my original passion, but my mom has always liked it and run a lot so, especially when I started working for a big consulting company and travelling a lot, running was the only sport I could be able to practice regularly.

Me and Francesco at a 10k run in Greenwhich park

Running in the morning 30 minute before work has almost become my morning routine and it makes me feel like I can do something different and think about my own stuff before going to work. This has been very important especially when working in consulting, where I was having dinner with my colleagues and then had to see them again for breakfast .... so a good break to start the morning on my own!

Even now that I moved to a corporate and my work life balance has definitely improved, I continue to run 5k every morning and, over the weekend, I usually do a longer run between 8 and 10k.

Sometimes I have fun doing running competitions (5k, 10k and half marathons), not really to win, but to improve my time.

Yoga

Last year I decided I wanted to explore something complementary to running, to improve my strength and stretch my arm strings, given the nearly 50 km I run per week, and yoga seemed like a good solution.

I tried different kind of yoga and I found my self closer to the more active style of it (Ashtanga, Rocket). These styles allow you to build a very good arm and core strength, improve your balance and flexibility and also to relax.

At the moment I am practicing yoga ~4 times per week, having 2 lessons per week (one dynamic/ weight loss yoga and a rocket one) and practicing 2 times over the weekend at home. Sometimes I also attend workshops, mostly focused on arm balances and inversions, that is what I am working at improving now.

I have to confess you that in an year or so I am planning to get my Yoga Teacher Training, as I think it is a good business opportunity and, also, I will really help me improving my practice.