In a healthy body, healthy mind

Dear coaches,

How many times in your life have you asked yourself what it's like for someone who is a lover of sports and recreation when it stops? Perhaps you would be able, or have the strength, to help such people, that is, patients?

By your own will and desire, at least I think that's how you chose that calling as work or personal pleasure, you are here to transmit good vibes to all those around you in halls, gyms, practice rooms...

It's nice to see all those powerful gadgets, each with its own purpose. This is exactly what the anatomy of a man dictates and says - a healthy mind in a healthy body.

You yourself know how much will, desire, effort and self-work are needed to establish the harmony of mind and body, so that the body works like clockwork. The current conditions of life and work that wear out our body and soul are inevitable. But life is someone's mother, and someone's stepmother, and it turns upside down in an instant, so a person falters, falls, sinks... Or he fights frantically for his bare life, swims out with a little luck and stays alive.

What do you think it's like to get cancer of any kind? What is it like to fight this scourge? What tactics to use, how many minutes are needed for one round, two, three... How many doses of fear, drops of sweat, squeezed out of pain after chemotherapy, radiation, sleepless nights and the question of whether this torment will end... Watching more unhappy people around, with numbers and always the same doctor's story, like template work.

I am rightfully writing about this because I myself went through the hell of the disease, fought with my will, self-belief and military discipline, for 5 years now. And I'm still fighting. I trained my mind, spirit and body to get it back as normal as possible. And I wonder what happens to those women who are from this story, and there are a lot of them, who don't know how to manage, not knowing what to do, how to proceed, what is the point of nutrition, what kind of recreation, what kind of exercise can they do... will be the reaction of all those who are in their close and wider environment?

We are still not getting out of the circular flow, and life is not that easy - when something like this happens, a person has to fight and manage as best he knows how.

The stories start in October (or it doesn't matter, it's another date) and what about the remaining days of the year. Do you know how I fight? Alone, for the most part. Thanks to the eminent doctor for the successful operation. I followed his advice, and then I turned into an ear. An ear that listens like a radar to what my body and organism is looking for, what hurts it, what it likes and what it doesn't. After 7 months of hellish therapy, I returned to training and worked out to see how much strength was left in me. I was satisfied.

But over time, therapy leaves its mark. Nothing is the same anymore. No one then asks how many people like me are deprived, because no one wants to listen, let alone adapt or organize training and help all those who would like to do so and even make their further existence a little easier. And do you know what the greatest salvation is? Exercising, circulation, proper breathing, that famous inhalation, exhalation, expelling all miseries and troubles from oneself.

How many women become permanently disabled, suddenly and not of their own volition, because the disease does not choose! How many of them cannot raise their arms after breast surgery, because they have swelling, whose lymph and blood flow do not work properly! Who cares?

Is it only the membership fee that matters, because as they say - the healthy does not trust the sick. Life does not stop if illness comes. It comes and goes, it's gone. Not everyone can be a sportsman, but a real athlete should think a little about these things, because, unfortunately, diseases have taken hold, so it is human to think about these things as well. It's nothing difficult, we need to start an action, in some way educate all those who have gone through the ordeal, because unfortunately many give up, the disease takes them away...

Everywhere in the civilized world there are educated physiatrists, psychologists, trainers and centers that provide services to the joy of all those who can make their lives more bearable and certainly succeed in regaining the most important thing - health and strength for the future.

I write this without any bad intentions, on the contrary - accept this as a well-intentioned proposal precisely out of respect for you and your work, and I personally know how much it takes for all that you do.

Because, in the end, if it weren't for those who love sports and recreation, there wouldn't be all those wonderful devices and gyms, fitness centers, and you trainers.

In the hope that at least one of you will move and think carefully about what has been written, I thank you on my behalf and hope that you will be even better towards yourself and those around you, because they say that life is a collection of our decisions. If you make smart decisions, luck will smile on you. But if you bring the wrong one, who knows what awaits you.... Our fate is predetermined after all. We can only hope that we have the strength to withstand what she has thrown at us and survive and move on.

Suzana Jovićević, with a big sports heart