Sports are my Therapy

I’ve been involved in sports my entire life. Growing up, I was an active kid — from the age of 6 or so I started playing basketball, baseball, and softball. Once I entered Jr. High School, I started playing Volleyball and participating in Track and Field — throwing events were my jam! Volleyball and track and field were how I first became an ASICS customer.

I continued participating in competitive sports throughout my high school years — frankly in retrospect, sports are likely what made me such a good student. We had a minimum grade point average required for participation and if I didn’t have that pressure I may not have done as well or gotten my homework done in a timely manner. Looking back, the one semester I didn’t participate in sports was my worst semester grade-wise. Funny that I hadn’t really thought about that until now.

I continued playing sports through college and beyond, trying pretty much anything and everything: adult recreational and sort of competitive team sports, competing in the Highland Games, running marathons and a handful of ultras, and training for all those things. What I have come to discover is that while I enjoy the competition and competitive nature of those sports, what I enjoy more is the goal setting and preparation that goes along with them. Pushing myself to get that new personal best at a throw or lift, seeing improvement in my vertical jump, and taking time off a finish time are what keeps me going and getting out of bed every day.

There have been a handful of times during my life that I haven’t been able to train or compete as much as I’ve wanted to. Some have been due to injury, and some have been due to work demands that I let get in the way of my physical and mental health — only recently have I really learnt and internalized that activity, no matter what it is, keeps my “mentals” in a good place. Early in the pandemic, when the gyms were closed, and I couldn’t play team sports, the structure I had in place with training and playing sports had disappeared and with it my satisfaction with life and the work I was doing. After things started to open back up and I was able to get back into my routine, my mental health didn’t rebound this time around. As I reflected on it, the demands of my former job were what was the root of the problem. Once I realized what it was, I promised myself that this was going to be the last time I worked for a company that made those sorts of demands.

When I started looking for a new job this time around, I promised myself that I was going to choose a job not based on the “coolness factor” of the technology or being at a “hip new start up trying to disrupt XYZ industry” but for an organization whose mission was to improve the health of people around the world and was a brand I believed in and could get behind, as well as valuing the health and well-being of its employees. I had the usual conversations with companies here in Portland, Oregon and beyond — this is the job, here are the benefits, we value work-life balance: a lot about the work part but not a lot about the life part and definitely not a lot about the human being part.

I honestly had not considered a shoe/apparel company: I have a ton of friends who had and do work for the shoe and apparel companies here and I had heard enough to know that I didn’t really want to work for them. When the job at ASICS Digital came across my radar, I applied on somewhat of a whim; I had heard of Runkeeper way back when but didn’t know that they had been acquired by ASICS. As I learned more about the position from the awesome recruiting team, I started to think more and more about my journey through life with sports and that ASICS had been part of that journey the entire time.

I am happy to be part of the ASICS Digital Family and am a case study in “Anima Sana In Corpore Sano”, our founding concept and company motto. It is built into the ASICS’ approach to the design and aesthetic of the corporate headquarters, the employee benefits package, and the current mental health and wellness campaign in partnership with NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) on ASICS.com. I look forward to our future journey together.