A new column looking for rays of light amid the gloom Exercise is now to be treasured

This is nothing to be proud of, but one of my unofficial achievements at school (of which I absolutely was proud, at the time) was managing to get out of doing PE classes for a whole term by using a series of ever more inventive excuses.

My relationship with exercise improved with time. Over the years, I accepted it into my life, slightly begrudgingly. But looking back at life Before Covid, exercise always occupied the “necessary evil” camp. Yes, I found ways to cantilever the gym and the odd run into my busy life, but only ever really because I “should”.

Well. It turns out that there’s nothing like a lockdown and the removal of free movement to have completely reinvented my relationship with exercise.

Until last month, even on the days that I didn’t go to the gym, my morning walk to the station, then back home, used to take up 6,000 steps a day. On weekends, that number doubled, as I travelled hither and thither seeing friends, going shopping and running errands, clocking steps up.

But now there is no chance – for most of us, at least – of any accidental steps occurring. And so the question of exercise and how we are going to get it has moved to the fore.

Movement is suddenly something to treasure: we’ve been handed an hour a day to spend outside and, boy, are we going to make it count.

And so we are all runners now. Or cyclists. Or we are just walkers, striding out deliberately to claim our 60 minutes in the sunshine and the increasingly fresher air with more purpose than ever.

I’m guessing that I am not alone in having gone from being a once-a-week jogger to running three or four times. The freedom! The endorphins! The sheer – and I’m sorry to use the G-word – gratitude.

Our appreciation for being allowed outside was thrown into even more sharp relief by Matt Hancock’s – so far empty – threat last week to ban outside exercise altogether.

But even if that does eventually happen, we will survive. We will channel the spirit of the people of Whoville, who found a way to have Christmas, even when the Grinch tried to steal it away and we will remember this: there will always be home exercise. Even the tiniest of apartments or bedrooms can usually accommodate a yoga mat.

And, where I might once have rolled my eyes at the idea of online yoga, now I can see only the benefits. That wave of promising calm that comes with lighting a candle, shutting the living room door to spend a solo, news-free hour tuning into a vinyasa class streamed by the teacher I used to see regularly IRL is a reassuring reminder that life is finding a way to go on.

And yes, sure, the yoga is great. But claiming that hour, work, worry, and parenting free, has become a lifeline that makes me giddy.

We have an hour to spend outside and, boy, we are going to make it count

Victoria Young