I READ recently that it can take anything from 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit and approximately 66 days for new behaviour to become automatic.
I wonder where this will leave us all as we begin the move away from the lockdown phase we have all been living under for the past nine weeks.
For many, the lockdown has provided them with time to think about their fitness and there has been a lot of talk about the increase in activity as many people took the opportunity to exercise outside, at their preferred time. I am sure most people are keen to keep up their new level regime, time permitting.
However, for sport this change for could go either way, and that is why it is important that sports organisations have robust plans in place to get them back on the starting blocks and have a more flexible approach to encourage people back into participation.
We all know now what the route map is like for moving through the various phases of the pandemic. It was great to see that at least four sports have been given the green light in phase one, albeit with constraints, to start up again.
I can only imagine that lovers of golf, tennis, fishing and bowling are all patiently poised, ready and raring to go!
So, good news to an extent. However, as we all know, these sports offer more than just an opportunity to participate, as in many cases they are aligned to a clubhouse which is the social hub for their own particular sporting community.
We are all aware that for some time to come they will need to remain closed, which of course will have a major impact on the income that they can generate.
There is no quick solution, no flick of the switch that will take us out of lockdown ensuring that we are all kept safe and well.
It is in a large part about how we react to the changes and follow the guidelines as stated.
Getting sport back to normal is going to be a slow process, with incremental steps inching us closer with each day to a return for all sports, whether as an elite athlete, an enthusiastic amateur, coach, official or spectator.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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