Movement Through Life: Sport and Movement Belong to Everyone

​If you’ve ever stood on the sidelines, dreading the moment someone might call your name, this might feel familiar. Standing there, hoping not to be picked last, but also hoping not to be picked at all because you might mess it up. Maybe you swung at the ball and missed, tripped over your feet, or froze under the pressure. And then came the laughter, the whispers, the heat of embarrassment that stayed with you long after the game.
Even if you were one of the lucky ones—always picked first—sport might not have been easy. The pressure to perform, to win, and to carry the team came with its own challenges. For some, even the joy of being good at sport was overshadowed by the fear of messing up.
For many girls, school sports and PE lessons create one of two outcomes: confidence or avoidance. The ones who were laughed at, left out, or shamed often carry that experience into adulthood, believing movement isn’t for them. Early experiences in movement shape how we feel about our bodies and whether we believe movement belongs to us.
This blog isn’t about creating athletes or winning medals. It’s about ensuring movement belongs to everyone, no matter how fast, strong, or skilled they are. Movement isn’t about competition or performance. It’s about creating environments where every girl feels excited to move, free from judgement or fear.

Why Sport Feels Excluding for So Many GirlsFor many girls, sport stops being fun as soon as the stakes get high. Puberty brings new challenges, and suddenly, movement feels awkward and exposing.
Here’s what so many girls face:

• Bodies change. Breasts start to develop, periods arrive, and shapes shift. A girl worrying about leaking through her PE kit or adjusting a tampon during a game isn’t exactly feeling excited about sport.
• Judgement is everywhere. Every missed ball or stumble feels like an opportunity for someone to laugh or point. The fear of being watched and judged can make movement feel like a risk, not a reward.
• Sport feels exclusive. Competitive games can make sport feel like it’s only for the naturally athletic or skilled. For everyone else, it becomes a source of dread.

These moments stick. A bad experience in PE can leave a mark that carries on for years, shaping how girls feel about exercise and whether they’ll ever try to reconnect with movement again.

What Happens When Girls Disconnect From Movement
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The girl who dreaded PE often becomes the woman who avoids fitness. She remembers the judgement, the embarrassment, and the feeling that she doesn’t belong.
The girl who tripped over her feet in netball may avoid trying new activities as an adult, afraid of being laughed at. The girl who leaked through her shorts might never set foot in a group fitness class, worried about the same thing happening again. These experiences stop being about skill and start being about fear.
These stories don’t need to define the future. Movement isn’t about being the best or proving yourself to others. It can be about joy, freedom, and discovering what your body can do.

Rewriting the Story of Movement
As trainers, coaches, and teachers, we have the opportunity to change how people experience movement. It begins by making movement joyful, not pressured. For some, this might mean leaving competitive games behind entirely. For others, it’s about creating spaces where it feels safe to try, to fail, and to laugh.

Four Ways to Reframe Movement for Girls and Women

1. Focus on Joy, Not just Performance
   Movement should feel good. That doesn’t mean it has to be easy, but it should feel rewarding, playful, or freeing. Movement isn’t about medals or winning. It’s about building self-efficacy ,experiencing the joy of simply moving your body, in whatever way feels right.
2. Create Safe Spaces
   Girls and women need environments where they feel comfortable and supported. This means no judgement, no pressure, and no rigid rules about how movement should look. Whether it’s in a gym, at school, or in a park, the atmosphere matters as much as the activity.
3. Offer Choices in Movement
   Not everyone loves football or netball. Some might prefer dancing, yoga, rock climbing, or simply walking in nature. The key is offering options and helping them find something they enjoy.
4. Acknowledge Past Experiences
   Many women carry baggage from bad experiences with sport or movement. Listening to their stories, validating their feelings, and showing them that it doesn’t have to be like that anymore is the first step toward reconnecting with movement.​

How to Avoid Fallacies and Make Better Decisions
Everything we do as trainers should have research in mind. The problem is that “research” is often used as a catch-all term, covering everything from personal opinions to decisions based on large-scale, peer-reviewed studies. At FASTER, research is at the core of everything we teach.
Through the Motor Skill Application Specialist programme, I teach the components of research that help you find the best information without needing to become a full-time research scientist. The programme is designed to be accessible, so you don’t need to have studied science at university to apply these techniques.
Before diving into research, it’s important to avoid falling for common fallacies that can lead to bad decisions. In my experience, these are the three biggest fallacies in the fitness industry:

• Appeal to Authority: Trusting an authority’s opinion without considering the evidence.
• Example: Buying into a supplement endorsed by a celebrity without scientific support.
• Bandwagon Effect: Believing something is correct simply because it’s popular.
• Example: Adopting a new fitness trend without evaluating whether it’s right for your client.
• Ad Hominem: Criticising the person making an argument instead of evaluating their argument.
• Example: Discrediting advice because of someone’s appearance rather than assessing its validity.

The second stage of research is asking the right question. For example, instead of searching “How does wine improve my health?” (which assumes a benefit), frame the question neutrally. A better question might be:

• “What are the key factors influencing how we experience hormonal changes during puberty?”
• “What are the physical and psychological impacts of hormonal changes through puberty ”

These questions avoid bias and guide research toward more useful answers.
Finally, it’s important to set clear criteria for the evidence you’ll accept. If you’ve decided to only use peer-reviewed journal articles, don’t include blogs or books to fill the gaps.
Many students on the MSAS programme are women who have experienced different stages of life and want to use their research skills to avoid the scams and misinformation aimed at them on social media. These skills help trainers offer better advice, avoid harmful trends, and create real impact for their clients.

As a club operator or trainer, you have the power to reshape how girls and women experience movement. By equipping your team with the right education and tools, you can create environments where movement feels safe, joyful, and personal.
The Motor Skill Application Specialist programme gives trainers the skills to ask better questions, design meaningful movement experiences, and support clients through every stage of life. Whether you're working with clients navigating puberty, the climacteric period, or specific performance goals, this programme provides practical, evidence-based techniques.
If any of this article piqued your interest in learning and taking the next step, please reach out to me Whatsapp +447515813171.
The MSAS course I frequently mention includes the following modules, and I'm happy to provide more information if you're interested:

• Deconstruct Popular Workouts: Break down components of popular social media workouts using specific questions. Identify why the program is popular or limited and combine findings to build an ideal viral workout.
• Stimulus - Emotion - Feeling: Understand how the peripheral and central nervous systems produce feelings. Discover the influence of feelings on pain, fatigue, and performance.
• Defining Client Experience: Have a process to define the experience clients want. Implement "Why Why So So" to explore motivational and demotivational factors. Consider environment, exercise selection, energy systems, and coaching styles.
• Overcoming Obstacles: Analyze potential problems such as motivation, pain, injury, skill deficit, power output, and endurance. Share a vision of client goals and address obstacles.
• Motor Skills Anatomy: Learn about bones, joints, and their movements. Understand the big 8 combinations of joint feelings. Describe muscle reactions to bone and joint movements.
• Observing Motion: Apply the 5 defined FASTER skills to describe movements. Use the Holistic Movement Assessment Chart (HMAC) to analyze sequences of movements. Create motions from the HMAC, your new superpower in seeing movement.
• Building Assessments: Break down the purpose of assessments. Develop assessments based on research, sport, environment, biomechanics, and intensity. Ensure assessments can be accurately repeated.
• FASTER's Skill to Performance Continuum: Define the learning process of motor skills. Identify exercise variables and the importance of form. Understand the relationship between loading and performance variables.
• Neural Notching and the Exercise Generator: Define neural notching, where the brain (Central Nervous System) and Peripheral Nervous System spike in power during movements. Design hundreds of exercises at pace through the exercise generator. Apply variables and load to the exercise generator.
• Rule the Tool - The Science of Loading: Break down components of loading tools. Apply loading tools to exercise clusters.
• Fatigue Management and Coaching for 10: Understand the role of homeostasis in fatigue management. Identify stages of homeostasis and its influence on exercise delivery. Coach for optimal performance.
  
• Bonus: Experience-Focused Programming: Gain expertise in applying MSAS with diverse groups such as puberty, pre/postnatal, climacteric (peri and post-menopause), and hypertrophy clients.​

​​Thank you for reading the article. Please reach out if I can help you further. Below is the link to the course I teach if you are interested. 

Part 2 ; Moving through Pre and Postnatal changes

Motor Skill Application Specialsit