How To Successfully Navigate A Sports Direct

Today we are blessed with a visit from royalty – a guest post.
The QM is here to tell us how we too can successfully navigate a Sports Direct….
As with any Sports Direct scenario, you can expect some swears.

Recently I felt inspired to tackle the ongoing state of my own fitness level, which currently resides somewhere between potato and that manky parsnip rolling around the fridge drawer. So, like millions of other post-30 mothers up and down the country, I decided to get up off my arse and get all #thisgirlcan. So I joined my local women’s rugby team, as you do when you literally have no fucking clue what you’re doing. But still;

YASSSSSS! #THISGIRLCAN! POINT ME TO THE FITNESS SECTION FOR I AM NOW WOMAN AND I CAN SQUAT!

Under no illusions that my sporting prowess is at the utter dogshit level I left it at in Year 9, I did what any self-respecting bird who needs a boost into exercise does and hit up sportsdirect.com. A myriad of lycra confusion and Kylie fucking Jenner pics later, I realised I was going to have to actually go to a sports shop and buy myself some gear. Turns out my maternity leggings and older than Satan’s arsehole T-shirt collection really weren’t going to cut it.

Having never ventured across the threshold of a sports shop since the age of about 13 (when 3-stripe poppers and an ellesse hoody were everything you could ever hope for as a teenage girl), I was wholly unprepared for the stretch-fit atrocity I was about to embark on. And so, naivety in hand, I casually strolled into my local Sports Direct.

HOLY SHIT.

Who did this? WHO? I want answers. Frankly, I demand an apology for the complete navigational bullfuck that my poor tired brain just endured. Sports Direct is the literal seventh circle of Hell. I’ve had more fun trying to fight off nanas in a clearance section at Primark than I have trying to simply just walk around the fucking floor of a Sports Direct without getting ramraided into a shit-ton of Little Mix tit covers (sports bras my arse). There’s just no sanity in the place, whatsoever.

Here are just a few things I learned during that fateful afternoon.

1. Fuck you, stock cupboard.

Basically, stock cupboards are for fools. Who even needs to keep a supply of stock hidden out the back of the shop when you can literally place EVERY SINGLE BOX OF TRAINERS IN THE WORLD out on the shop floor for your customers to knock over? I mean, really – storage is so lame.

        2. Be 7″8 or get the fuck out.

Everything you could possibly need…15 feet above your head on the fucking wall. Who designed this shit? Nobody wants to have to ask one of the sullenly placed shop assistants to go and somehow weave a ladder through the labyrinth of lycra just to get down the things you might actually want to buy. Stop putting shit on the wall, it’s nothing more than a deterrent.

         3. Get ready to rumble.

You’re going to get your arse handed to you in Sports Direct. I mean shoving, pushing, buggies, confused old men, teenagers creeping up your arsehole to grab trainers and tops and God only knows what else as everything is fucking hoyed together anyway. This is not a casual mooch around Dotty P’s. Be ready for it.

       4. The prices will make you weep.

I mean, I just can’t even begin to understand the mentality of paying in excess of £15 for something that you’re going to potentially turn rancid with your own sweat, but there you go. If you want to part with the thick end of £40+ for sports brand leggings and tops, you’re in the right place. And I’m not even going to start on the trainers. Fuck me, if you ever want to feel entirely out of touch with the real world, start by the running section in the Sports Direct footwear department.

   5. There will come a moment where you feel like quitting.

And that’s OK. You know what, there’s no shame in it. Quit. The place is like The Crystal Maze meets Saw. You must escape with your life, and hopefully a pair of trainer socks you grabbed on the scramble for the exit. But if you’re determined to power through…

     6. You’ll do laps of the same display rack and still not find what you need.

There’s just absolutely no fucking logical pattern to the layout of a Sports Direct. Not just my one, there’s a pattern of insanity running through the lot of them. Running crap next to swimwear mingled in with socks and then the odd backpack hoyed in for good measure. Oh, and let’s not forget the really oddly placed ‘normal clothes’ section where you can buy weird jeans and slogan t-shirts alongside your yoga mat. It’s visual devastation at its finest.

      7. You’ll impale yourself on a variety of insanely placed Peppa/Frozen/Hello Kitty kids’ umbrellas and you won’t even ask yourself why you’re bleeding.

By this point, anything goes. You’ll almost certainly end up bringing one of the fuckers home too, if you were foolish enough to attempt this trip with a small person in tow. I was…would not recommend.

    8. You will never question your motivation more then when searching for a sports bra in Sports Direct.

Firstly, they’re all in fucking boxes, so you have to be the weirdo who gets each one out and ‘has a feel’ whilst simultaneously tyring to riverdance around the buggy that someone has parked directly behind you. Secondly, they’re all in crazy european sizes so you have to try and decipher the metric system lingo and attempt to translate it into a size that won’t suffocate your tits into next week. Not going to happen. Thirdly, THERE’S NO AIR CON EVER so you’re riverdancing around the buggy, sweating your nips off and looking like the utter perv that you are while fondling a pre-boxed bra in public. Awesome.

    9. They’ll try to fox you with a display cabinet obstacle course near the tills.

Oddly, a mounted swimming costume and a framed photo of Alan Shearer in a plastic display tower isn’t that enticing, Sports Direct. It’s just more fucking hurdles for us plebs to weave around on our quest to make it to the payment point and out unscathed. Just behave, less is more.

   10. You will feel a dirty sense of accomplishment once you finally break free of the store.

While vowing ‘never again’ as you struggle sweatily back to the car, you’ll begin to feel a sense of sporting arrogance that only true survivors of the Sports Direct gauntlet can understand. Don’t fear it. Own that feeling – you fucking earned it.

To Sum Up:

Sports Direct is an assault course. It is a masterclass in those who don’t grasp the idea of less is more. Who needs SAS training when you could just chuck recruits into a Sports Direct and see which one of them survives? Total Warrior is bollocks – send those divs into a Sports Direct and see how they navigate the mess. If you’ve ever survived the place, you need a medal. I’m ordering online from now on, at least then I’ll get that mug you can use to collect floodwater in a crisis.

I hope this post inspires you all to take up exercise and also equips you with the skills needed to survive in a Sports Direct. And to the uncultured shitgibbon whose job it was to design the layout of their stores I say this. Fuck off. All the way off. All of the way into the sea and never darken our doors again. Cheers,

The QM.

You can find me over here at The QM.