The containment of March and April had seen their total stop, September, a timid restart and the reconfinement of November, a new brake. However, adapted physical activities constitute a real public health issue. These sports offers, adapted to the age or pathology of people, have benefited many fewer practitioners for nearly a year. Essentially people who have a medical certificate allowing them to practice a supervised sporting activity.
This is the case of Marie-Paule and Nathalie, who took up tennis in Châteaudun. They practice it once or twice a week under the benevolent gaze of Antoine Patault, the sports educator and health referent of the Tennis club of Dunois who intervenes, on Mondays and Thursdays, with an adult public under six pathologies: “l ‘hypertension, certain cancers (mainly breast), diabetes, aging, obesity and heart disease’.
A real physical and mental benefit
This program is being set up for the third year in close collaboration with the multidisciplinary health center, and it works. “It’s wonderful,” says Marie-Paule, 79 years old. “I am less tired than before. We stir, I love it. “In 2011, this former trader suffered from” a small stroke “and suffered from loss of balance. “The doctor encouraged me to practice another sport in addition to the gym at Dunois Loisirs. I didn’t want to go for tennis, but he insisted. He did well. “
It’s a real pleasure. I feel much better now. That doesn’t stop me from being in pain sometimes. When this is the case, just go slower
Nathalie (Healthy tennis practitioner at the Tennis club of Châteaudun)
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Marie-Paule now does not miss a session and beyond the progress made with racket in hand, she finds lost physical sensations, and also unfailing mental strength. This is confirmed by his comrade from Jallans, Nathalie, 56, who suffers from fibromyalgia. “I had never hit a ball before. It’s a real pleasure. I feel much better now. That doesn’t stop me from being in pain sometimes. When this is the case, it is enough to go slower. “
The puzzle of sports equipment
If healthy tennis, like other adapted physical activities, can continue despite the health crisis, this was not the case during the first confinement. “The sports facilities closed and there was no possible exemption. Physical activity was very complicated, ”recalls Yon Bergeron, the manager of the Eure-et-Loir Sports and Health Center. “For the second [confinement], the government has implemented derogatory measures: people who came with a medical prescription could continue their appropriate physical activity, whatever it may be. But there was still a certain fear of communities to open up to a fragile public. And then there is the problem of opening equipment for only one slot per week. “
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Jean-Marc Sene, sports doctor in Lucé: “Physical activity is essential”
In the Drouais, practitioners of “prescription sport” are lucky: the pools of Vernouillet and Saint-Rémy-sur-Avre, closed to the public, remain open to them. They can enjoy the pools under the supervision of a lifeguard, or aquagym sessions. In any case, there cannot be more than four or five people together in the pools.
Health sport players worried about a sedentary lifestyle
For her part, Christine Rousseaux, development advisor for physical education and voluntary gymnastics (EPGV), notes among some practitioners a “fear of being contaminated because of their weakened health and for others an impatience and a need to resume, to find the group ”. Same perception at the Club omnisports de Vernouillet (COV), which maintains its physical activity sessions adapted for overweight children. “This activity was created in January 2019. But this year, we are receiving fewer children. Some families are afraid to send their young to closed places, ”explains Claire Haton, of the COV.
The benefits acquired by the regular practice of the activity are quickly lost
Christine Rousseaux (Development advisor to the Eurelian committee of the EPGV)
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Proof for Yon Bergeron that it remains difficult to practice healthy sport during the health crisis, even if “things are evolving in the right direction”. While waiting for better days, the players in health sport in the department are chomping at the bit in front of the inactivity that has gained the population since the start of the pandemic.
A sports and health center labeled in Eure-et-Loir
“The benefits acquired by the regular practice of the activity are quickly lost”, recalls Christine Rousseaux. The EPGV committee of Eure-et-Loir has stopped its activities, but advises its members to “resume independently the flexibility exercises, joint mobilization, muscle strengthening that they have already practiced in session and, above all, to walk twenty thirty minutes a day depending on the possibilities ”.
You don’t have to stay all day on your sofa or in front of your computer! Sedentary lifestyle is a global scourge, which kills more than tobacco. Today more than before, you have to play sports
Caroline Marco-Choiseau (Chartres sports educator who runs a healthy basketball activity with the Chartres basketball club)
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“You don’t have to stay all day on your sofa or in front of your computer! Sedentary lifestyle is a global scourge, which kills more than tobacco, ”insists Caroline Marco-Choiseau, a sports educator from Chartres who runs a healthy basketball activity with the Chartres basketball club. “Today more than before, you have to play sports. “
Philippe Provôt, Géraldine Sellès and Pascale Rouchaud
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