🐢 Getting back into sports after years of inactivity, the honest struggle

Have not played anything remotely athletic in nearly six years, and decided a couple of months ago that this specific stretch of inactivity had genuinely gone on long enough to actually do something about it properly. The honest truth is that it has been considerably harder than I expected, and I say that as someone who fully anticipated it being difficult going into this. My body apparently forgot how to do things I used to consider completely basic, and my first attempt at even a light jog left me winded within what felt like an embarrassingly short distance. There is also a genuine mental component nobody really warns you about beforehand. I kept comparing my current, considerably weaker self to the version who used to play regularly years ago, which honestly made the whole return feel more discouraging than it probably needed to feel if I had simply focused on my actual current starting point instead. A friend who went through a genuinely similar return herself last year told me the first month is reliably the worst part, and that things do gradually start feeling less brutal after that if you actually stick with it consistently. Two months in now, I am cautiously starting to believe her on that specific point. Progress has been slow, occasionally frustrating, and honestly nowhere near where I originally hoped I would already be at this point in the process. But I have stopped skipping sessions entirely the way I did constantly during that first genuinely rough month, which I am choosing to count as real progress in its own right. If anyone else has actually gone through this same kind of long return after years away, does it eventually stop feeling this discouraging, or does it just become easier to push through despite the discouragement still occasionally showing up?

The mental barrier surprised me considerably more than the physical one ever did, convincing myself to actually leave the house most evenings took more effort some weeks than the run itself once I was finally out there moving properly. Slowly getting easier now after nearly two full months of sticking with it properly, one small session at a time without giving up on it.

Restarted running at thirty eight after a full decade of doing absolutely nothing physical beyond walking to the car most days, and the first proper week genuinely humbled me more than I expected any of it to going in. Managed barely a full kilometre before stopping completely, which felt oddly disappointing given how easy it used to feel years back.