I found that if my hair was braided, doing cardio exercises became as hard as hell. Jumping felt like I had an extra 3kg weight pulling at my scalp. Before long, it felt like my roots were becoming weaker.

And then there was the fact that my scalp was covered in sweat after working out. Now, that might be something other women expect to experience, but in my case, all that sweating left my scalp incredibly itchy. I knew that excess sweat wasn’t good for my hair, so I resorted to washing it after every workout. And that only made matters worse because my hair got drier by the day.

Regular washing isn’t good for Black hair; in order to be healthy, it needs to have all its natural oils intact. That’s because it tends to be drier and more fragile than other types of hair – and shampoo works by stripping hair of everything, whether that’s flakes, product build-up, sweat or oil.

I thought about other forms of exercise that might get my heart pumping without making me break into a sweat. Swimming? Absolutely not: chlorine isn’t massively friendly to Black hair. It dries it out by breaking down the amino acids in the hair and, as someone who’s already experienced quite a bit of breakage, I didn’t want to risk any more. There’s also the fact that most haircaps don’t cater to afro hair (although Soul Cap is one brand designed specifically to support Black swimmers).

Exercising with afro hair: Black women share their top tips on caring for their hair at the gym