You hover over the booking button for the class you used to enjoy. You would like to go, yet you are already rehearsing an explanation for where you have been. Before you have even put your trainers on, you can hear yourself saying, “I've been so bad. I need to start again.”

It is a familiar little...

You open your diary to book a workout and immediately spot the problem. The space you thought you had on Thursday now contains a meeting, and Saturday is beginning to look suspiciously like another working day. You close the diary with a familiar thought: perhaps next week will be quieter.

For many...

You can be decades beyond the classroom and still feel the appeal of a new notebook in September. There is something quietly hopeful about an unused page, even if the first thing written on it will probably be a shopping list. That familiar sense of a new term can stay with us long after our schoold...

By the time you close your laptop, you may have spent the whole day being disciplined. You fitted in exercise before work and kept lunch deliberately light. Yet now you are standing in the kitchen, too tired to decide what to eat, wondering why looking after yourself seems to require so much effort....

There is a particular kind of promise you can find yourself making at the end of August. You look at the month ahead, notice how tired you have been feeling and decide that September will be the moment you finally put your health first. You begin mentally rearranging your mornings to make room fo...

There comes a point in midlife when fitness begins to mean something different. It is no longer simply about whether you can run faster, lift heavier or fit into a particular pair of jeans. Increasingly, it becomes about whether your body allows you to live the life you want without constantly ne...

Ten minutes can feel almost too insignificant to count. By the time you have finished work, answered the last email, prepared dinner and dealt with everything else waiting for you, the idea of finding an hour for yoga can feel unrealistic. So you decide you will do it properly tomorrow instead. Tomo...

You probably do not think very much about your balance when it is working well. You step off a kerb while talking, pull on a pair of trousers standing on one leg, reach into a high cupboard, turn quickly when somebody calls your name and walk across uneven ground without consciously calculating a...

There is a familiar moment many women recognise. You stand up after a long meeting and immediately reach for the back of your thighs. You get out of the car and instinctively stretch your hips. Your shoulders feel tight after a day at the laptop, so you pull one arm across your chest and hope it wil...

You can exercise regularly and still stand up from your desk at five o’clock feeling as though your hips have forgotten how to move. The first few steps feel stiff, your lower back may complain, and after a long drive or train journey you find yourself instinctively stretching before you can walk co...

You stretch. You go to yoga. You can still touch your toes, perhaps quite comfortably. Yet your knees complain when you get out of a low chair, your hips feel stiff after sitting through meetings, your shoulders grumble when you reach overhead and the first few steps after getting out of the car fee...

Why Your Body Feels Stiffer in Midlife Even When You Still Exercise

You can be doing many of the “right” things and still notice that your body does not move quite as freely as it used to. Perhaps you walk several times a week, go to the gym, practise yoga or make a genuine effort to stay active. Y...