14 • Keeping fit & healthy at home


At Home & In Te Garden • Sunday 24 May 2020


Locked down with Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill S


Te Olympic gold medallist tells Mattie Lacey- Davidson about life after retirement, motherhood and maintaining her fitness from home


ince picking up her first senior competitive medal in 2006, Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill has had


many life-changing moments. During her athletics career she took home an impressive haul of medals, including heptathlon gold at the London 2012 Summer Olympics and silver in the same event at the Rio Games in 2016. Jessica’s life changed in the years


following her 2013 marriage to long- term partner, Andy Hill. Tey had their first child in 2014; in 2016, she retired and a year later a second child arrived. Now her life, like everyone else’s across the globe, has transformed again, as governments enforce lockdown measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. I caught up with Jessica to find out


what those personal milestones meant to her, and what life is like now.


What have you been up to since you retired? I retired in 2016 after the Rio Olympics and spent a few months really enjoying being a mum to my two year-old-son, Reggie. I also continued my ambassadorial work with Adidas, Vitality and Santander, with all my roles focusing on sharing my love of being fit and healthy. In 2017, I had my little girl Olivia and I realised that juggling home life with work and trying to stay fit and healthy was a whole new challenge. I feel I’ve been so lucky to have had


JESSICA ENNIS-HILL/JENNIS FITNESS


an amazing team of people to help me achieve the incredible levels of fitness that I reached, and that so much of what I learned is ingrained


in me. Tis is why I made the decision to launch my own fitness business with the needs of women at its core. Setting up Jennis is something I’m super passionate about.


What are your top tips for staying fit and active during lockdown? Have a routine — maybe a time of day that you exercise — and plan what you’re going to do. We’re all able to go out once a day, and for me that’s a walk with my children — usually a slow walk with lots of exploring — so my exercise is home circuits for quick bursts of intense exercise.


Do your children take an interest in sports and exercise? My children see me and Andy exercise a lot and they often join in. For them, it’s all a bit of fun but as Reggie gets older he’s getting increasingly competitive.


Did becoming a mum change your approach to exercise and diet? Becoming a mum was different each time, as with Reggie I was still a competing athlete, so my training changed to more intense, short sessions and my diet was still that of an athlete. When I had Liv, I’d retired and now had two children. I had to make exercise a feature of my week. I have to schedule time into my diary and work with Andy to make sure we both get exercise time. Being a busy mum and not competing has meant I’ve had to change the way I eat. I can no longer eat whatever I want but now I simply think a little more about portion size.


I’m a believer in moderation — nothing is off limits food-wise.


Jennis shares a lot of health and fitness advice. What inspired it? Jennis focuses on women, and as a mum of two who’s trained all her life I wanted to share some of the lessons I learnt from my elite performance team — whether that’s how to care for your body as you grow a baby to how to deal with disappointment and stress. Troughout life we all deal with so much, and having a place that can help us harness the positive benefits of keeping fit and healthy is something I believe I can create with the help of another great team of people.


Why were you keen to dedicate so much of Jennis to pre- and postnatal health? Having had two babies and two very different pregnancies and postnatal journeys, I wanted to start by sharing some of the simple but really effective exercises that my physios created for me for my first pregnancy. I religiously followed the pre- and postnatal plans they devised and was able to win a World Championship gold medal in heptathlon based on 10 months of training. I dug these exercises out for my second pregnancy and again used them as the basis for my fitness journey.


Jessica Ennis-Hill’s fitness app, Jennis, is available for iOS and Android at £9.99 per month. jennisfitness.com @jennisfitness @jennispregnancy


BackBaller — an Irish invention that can stand in for your physiotherapist


A small Irish company from Shannon, County Clare is offering relief to those unable to access their physiotherapist with a range of ingenious self- massage devices


It all started five years ago when Irish former international runner Noel Marshall was told he’d require back surgery to deal with a rupture between his L5 and S1 vertebrae. At the time, Noel noticed


modern-day athletes were very engaged with the process of foam- rolling. Noel bought one and started a programme from Gerard Hartmann with the aim of releasing the tight muscles causing lower back pain. “It was working but every day I used


it, I was rolling all over the floor and saying to myself ‘Wouldn’t it be so much better if the roller was mounted on a frame to stabilise it’,” explains Noel. So, he made a prototype and began


using it. Just four weeks later, he was pain-free and began to regain his full range of motion. “I was able to run again,” Noel says.


“Tis thing changed my life and I knew it was a product that people would want.” Since its launch in September 2016,


BackBaller has become the go-to foam roller for many of the world’s leading sports stars and teams, including Manchester City. Based in Shannon, Muscle Ballers is continuing to develop


T: +353 (0) 61 364085 M: +353 (0) 86


9127534 UK T: 01245 79 0320 E: noel@backballer.com backballer.com


other self-myofascial release products as its sales rise. Last year’s sales topped €1m (£870,000) and the company is on course to double that in 2020. “We’re exporting worldwide,” says


Noel. “We’ll continue to grow as people are realising the importance of good health and looking after themselves.”


"Since its launch in 2016, BackBaller has become the go-to foam roller for many of the world’s leading sports stars and teams, including Manchester City"


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