Project Warrior Goddess

My quest for strength, fitness and superpowers

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Writer, Photographer, Artist, Aspiring Strongperson,
  • From Dancing to Strength Competitions: My Project Fearless Updates

    From Dancing to Strength Competitions: My Project Fearless Updates

    Here we are, nearly 7 months after I started this new project and I haven’t yet told you what I have been up to!

    Time to remedy that I think!

    Not only that but I have been reminded that I have been at this blog now for 12.5 years!

    Which is a little insane really… it also reminds me that I really should post a little more on here, after all if I don’t tell you all about my exercise antics, how will we know it really happened 😀

    So without further ado, updates!!

    First of all, I have gone back to dancing! I mentioned in my last post that I had, well I am still back and I still love it. This was the whole point of project fearless but I think the project is still very valuable even if it achieved one of its goals within weeks of its inception! I am now a fully fledged dancer for the Tattered Court, well almost fully fledged, I was meant to dance out two weeks ago but I got an unfortunately times rubbish cold so couldn’t make it… but I am a nearly fledged dancer with Tattered court, I have made my kit and they told me to, I didn’t just make one and hope!

    I may only know two and 5/3 dances but I am getting there! Yes I know 5/3 sounds like more than a dance, and it would be if the 3rds were all from the same dance but they aren’t! Anyway my point is I am a member of the side and it is a side full of lovely people, who are not going to tell me I am too fat to dance, I know that because I am quite fat now and not as fit as I would like and they haven’t said it.

    Yes I will stop going on about that eventually, but probably not until it stops entering my own head when i am dancing or when I can’t do something. I am aware that a lot of it is my own insecurity but if I can’t say it here in the publicity of my own blog where can I say it 😀

    Anyway, suffice it to say, The Tattered Court are brilliant and totally accepting of all my oddnesses and brain full moments!

    Talking of brain full moments, there were a lot of those between my project fearless kick off and now, because in July I got made redundant, my last day at work was July 31st, and I spent the next 2 months treating job searching like my new job and thankfully I started a new job on 29th September so I am now once again gainfully employed, but it did throw me off a bit (a lot!) during the summer!

    Now you would think that not having a job would give me more time to train and exercise and all that, and in theory it did, but i was determined not to get out of the habit of at least feeling like I was going to work and on top of that there was a lot of brain space taken up with worrying about when/whether I would get a new job so it did but a little bit of a spanner in the works.

    That being said, goal two of project fearless was to compete in the Shropshire Strength Games on 2nd November and I somehow through all of the things that were going on, managed to get my training done! I loved having a coach for the time I was training, it made such a huge difference and the Shropshire Strength Coach was brilliant, even through all my emotional meltdowns and totally random things that went wrong. So between us, somehow we managed to get me to the competition! I wasn’t quite as prepared as I would have liked, what with starting a new job 2 weeks before it, but i was prepared! I could do all the things and even the axle floor to overhead was no longer my nemesis!

    It was an excellent day, or at least it started out excellently and ended a bit sadly as I had to pull out of the competition. I did the first even which was the axel and it wend ok, then came the deadlifts which went really well, exactly according to the training plan and the next 3 events were set to be ones I had improved at a huge amount during training and was really keen to see how I could do.

    However…

    After the deadlifts, I noticed that my back was sore, like really sore, in the muscle not on the spine but all spasmy and I couldn’t get it to ease off. It was one of those situations where I felt I wasn’t badly injured but f I carried on I would be so I (for once) did the sensible thing and stopped. It was a sad end, but I am here a month later totally injury free and happy which I don’t think i would have been if I had carried on!

    So even though the outcome was not really as I would have liked, I am still really pleased with myself for going and doing it! I had a hard job training for it because there seemed to be endless set backs but I did it and I got there and I proved I could.

    SO I am going to say that project fearless goals were met! I was scared to do the things but I did them anyway and now I just need to work out what the next thing is!

    If anyone has any ideas feel free to let me know 😀

  • A new venture of epic proportions!

    If you are looking for a new amazing listen then I cannot recommend this podcast highly enough! It is absolutely excellent! Not just because the books are excellent, they are of course, but the podcast gives you more! You get commentary and wonderful insights from the author.

    And… at some point in the future, I will be on it. Despite this, I am not at all biased. This is objectively brilliant!

    The PorterGirl Podcast
  • Project Fearless

    Project Fearless

    The last post I put on here was about how I am scared of going back to Morris Dancing.

    So this post is about how I am going to change that!
    (Actually since I started writing this, it has become a post about how I have already changed that!)

    If you have been here a while you will know I do this sort of thing a lot, and that I love a good project name! If a project has a good name it is far more likely to work! At least that is true for me, I am not sure it is a valid basis for all projects but it is a good start!

    So, Project Fearless is go!

    It is a continuation of the goals I set out at new year but with a better project name and a renewed purpose and of course a logo!!. (New Year Goals)

    I am going to write them again here just so that no-one has to click about between posts if they don’t want to!

    I am going to re-embrace my old mantra of doing something every day. I, of course, have themes and I’ll get to those in a minute, but essentially each day I will do (at least) one thing that will further one of these goals (or more than one)

    • Rebuild my consistent gym/strongperson training habit
    • Reignite my yoga habit and improve my mobility and balance.
      Increase my cardio fitness so I can return to dancing. I will do this by adding lunchtime walks to my routine and adding Shaun T or other HIIT type sessions to the week
    • Increase my endurance by adding longer walks

    Essentially I want to get stronger, fitter (more productive, like a pig in a cage…no not that sorry Radiohead quote) sorry where was I?
    I want to get stronger and fitter and more mobile, I am hoping that these are not actually contradictory goals, I am aware that strongmen are not the most flexible of people but I am attempting mobility work to combat that. I am not trying to be all pretzel-y (to quote Adriene from Yoga with Adriene) but I do want to stop my inflexible ankles from making doing things hard!

    The official kickoff of this Project was meant to be my 49th birthday, but I was somewhat eager started early, on the 9th April in fact. I have done something every day since then! I even have strava records to prove it

    ok technically that only goes up until Sunday but I have done things since then too 🙂

    I will tell you about the thing I did on Monday now… It fits perfectly with the goals of Project Fearless, and the theme of me starting early… One of the goals of all of this was to make me not too scared to go back to Morris Dancing and on Monday, I went back to Morris Dancing! On Sunday night in a fit of bravery I messaged the side Tattered Court (who let me dance with them last year and were lovely) and asked if I could go back In fairly short order they said it was fine and I could go back the next practice, which was Monday so I agreed and there was no backing out!

    So, on Monday I returned to dancing…win 1 for Project Fearless! Next step, go back again next week and do it without being a massive ball of anxiety on the way! I will say more about this return and how it felt (awesome) in another post!

    I forgot to take a new photo so you can have this one again as it sums up the smiling!

    Win 2 for Project Fearless, I signed up for a strongwoman competition! It is not until November so that gives me enough time to train for it! The weights are all within the range that I have done before but beyond where I am now. They are at least within striking distance, so what I am trying to say is I think it is achievable. I will just have to not chicken out on the day!

    So just to recap, I am launching Project Fearless, on day 35 of doing something every day! So it is something of a soft launch but never mind…

    The last thing to do is to set a duration for the project… it was originally going to be for as long as it took for me to stop being scared and go back to dancing, but now I have already done that… so it needs to be at least until November 2nd so I am not too scared to go to this comp, but by the time I have got to November I may as well carry on for a year, and keep it going until 9th April 2026!

    That way I can call it, Project Fearless: No Fear for a Year!

  • I’m (probably) not too fat to dance but I am too scared

    I’m (probably) not too fat to dance but I am too scared

    This wasn’t the post I meant to write today, but something just occurred to me so this is what I am writing!

    In March last year I found a lovely new Morris side and I went along to their practice. I could still dance (much to my surprise) and I met such lovely people, and the whole thing made me so happy I almost cried.

    Me at dance practice, even I can see how happy I look!

    Because of work things at the time I only ended up going to two practices and didn’t think I could commit to it at the time. Despite that one of the women there has become a really good friend, and has introduced me to a load of other people who are also friends! This was unexpected and lovely and totally beside the point but I thought you needed to know.

    Anyway, I miss dancing, I keep dreaming about dancing and my reaction to going back that once has made me realise how much I miss it. I could go back, my friend Krissy says I would be welcome back any time, and I really want to go.

    But today I realised I am terrified.

    Terrified of being too fat to dance, I know I keep saying I am not but if lives in my mind and I can’t stop it.

    Terrified of being told I am too fat to dance. I know the people were lovely and I don’t think they would tell me that, I don’t even think they would think that. But then, I thought that before, and that lives in my head too.

    Terrified of standing out because I am bigger than everyone else and hating pictures and of my mind telling me that everyone is judging me.

    I am also terrified of doing a new thing, even though it is a new thing that I did before, I still have to gain courage all over again!

    The interesting thing is along side all of this, I am newly angry.

    Angry with the person that put this in my head to start with.

    Angry the people who didn’t tell me they were wrong ( I know some of you did and thank you I love you for that)

    Angry with myself for not getting past it.

    This has lived in my head now for nearly 6 years and I want to get past it. I want to stop it living in my head and this is the first step to that.

    I will keep you all posted on my progress (honestly I will despite me being rubbish at actually posting recently) and maybe, just maybe I can stop posting about that thing that happened 6 years ago and move on 🙂

  • I’m Not Fussy I’m Autistic!

    On the 30th September 2024 I received a formal diagnosis of Autism.

    So, I am now Autistic.

    Except that is not exactly it, I am autistic, but I have always been autistic, this is not new it is just a new name for why I often feel like an observer looking in to the world.

    It is an explanation for why I have always been different, why I have always reacted to things differently to people around me and have always had the absolute in ability to do things that other people find perfectly routine.

    Like eating food…

    I have been called fussy my whole life. Ever since I can remember having preferences I have had trouble with food. Things that other people considered totally normal (butter on sandwiches, anything spread on bread, sauce (apart from gravy), anything new and unexpected…) were completely impossible for me.

    My mum would try to sneak butter on to my sandwiches when i was at primary school in the belief that I would not notice, or eat it as it was the only thing that was available. Honestly she said this was an accident, and it may well have been but the point is I couldn’t just eat it.

    Once when I was about 10 we went out with my parents and their friends, it was a restaurant in London where we were having a roast dinner, this was safe, I liked roast dinner, however, this one for reason that I am still not clear on came with a fairly uniform sprinkling of parsley over the top. Not a sprig, easily removed, a sprinkling of chopped parsley over everything including in the gravy which aided the spread! This caused what was described at the time as a tantrum, it was unexpected, it was bright green and I had no idea how to deal with it at that time.

    This sort of occurrence was common during my childhood and it carried on into adult hood. Not the “tantrums” but the fact that I couldn’t eat new food or food I didn’t like.

    And so, I got branded as fussy.

    I still get branded fussy.

    And it causes me so much upset and annoyance, fussy implies that this is a choice, fussy implies I am being difficult, fussy implies diva-ish behaviour, fussy implies making a fuss which is something that (other than when I was an actual child) I have never done. If I am out to eat and there is one thing I like I am ok, if I am at a person’s house I can just leave the bits I can’t eat and I never impose my food “choices” on other people.

    I have always known this was something beyond my control, and my diagnosis confirms to me that it really is not my fault.

    It is not my fault that I couldn’t “just get over it”

    It is not my fault that I couldn’t “just eat it as is wouldn’t kill me”

    It is not my fault that the taste or smell of some unexpected or unpleasant (to me) food would make me quite literally be sick.

    It is not my fault that unexpectedly trying new food is something that is not really a thing I can do.

    It is not my fault and it is not something I am doing to be inconvenient to other people. I have always tried to minimise the impact of this, I don’t ask for special treatment (except for not putting butter on bread). Honestly I wish I could just try anything on the plate no matter what it touched and what it is mixed with. There are lots and lots of occasions where I see tables and plates full of food that look amazing in theory but they are all totally inaccessible to me and I just can’t eat it. My brain can’t take the risk of an unexpected taste or texture, I know logically that it would be ok in the long run, but my brain just won’t let me.

    The one thing I really don’t want to do in these situations is make a fuss, I want to just not eat the thing and quietly have a snack while no one is looking. I want to just quietly not eat the thing and be left alone. I want to have people accept my answer when I say no to something without having to justify it and give reasons. I will try to explain if people ask me but somehow it translates in people’s heads as me being fussy.

    And I really don’t want to have to defend myself again and again from accusations of being fussy.

    I can try new things, but I have to be mentally prepared to do it. I know how ridiculous that can sound to people whose brains don’t work like mine.

    I can sometimes eat the most unexpected things, give me Indian/Chinese/Thai food and I will eat almost anything on the menu.

    The other point I keep forgetting to make is that I have been this way for 48 years. I have a fairly well established set of behaviours in place which minimise the impact of this to the world around me. Foods I know I can eat in places I frequently go, ways of separating out food so nice things don’t get contaminated, and there are a lot of people out there who won’t even know I am doing it!

    So I am not fussy, I just have certain rules that I have to follow to make it ok with my brain, and I have certain sensory issues that make things difficult in some situations. I have belatedly realised that taste is a sense, so having strong reactions to taste is perfectly valid! It is also perfectly valid to ask a restaurant to take something off a dish if you can’t eat it. Lots of people do this for lots of reason, it isn’t making a fuss, it is stating a preference (or in my case a contrition that makes something edible…)

    I am not fussy, I am Autistic and that’s ok!!

  • Happy New Year and all that!

    Happy New Year and all that!

    AI generated me a Happy New Year Bear!

    You may well know by now that I don’t really do conventional New Year’s Resolutions, I have a habit of restarting things on the anniversary of my blogging life (midsummer) and I have been known to set new goals and whatnot at all sorts of random times of the year.

    It is not unheard of, however for me to set goals for the year ahead and that is exactly what I am going to do. It seems like as good a time as any to do a bit of a soft reset and start some things off again. The last 4 months of last year got a bit fraught workwise and I was involved with a project that involved me travelling a lot of days and generally stole a lot of my energy. That coupled with my autism diagnosis (yes I now have one of those… there is a post incoming all about it I promise) successfully derailed the habit forming progress I had made in the first 2/3 of the year. All is not lost though, I am starting off in a better place strength and fitness wise than I was last year and I do have one or two habits (or semi habits, as I don’t seem to be able to form habits really) in place.

    It also seems like this is a good time of year to start making new plans and doing new things, it feels quite optimistic. I think this is because of the days getting longer and lighter again, I know they are doing it very slowly but it does feel lighter, it might all be in my head but that is ok!

    So moving rapidly on to the goals:

    Exercise goals…
    I am going to re-embrace my old mantra of doing something every day. I, of course, have themes and I’ll get to those in a minute, but essentially each day I will do (at least) one thing that will further one of these goals (or more than one)

    • Rebuild my consistent gym/strongperson training habit with the aim of getting at least these lifts in: 125kg deadlift, 100kg squat, 55kg bench and overhead.
    • Reignite my yoga habit and improve my mobility and balance.
      Starting, as is tradition, with a 30 days of yoga from Yoga with Adriene
    • Increase my cardio fitness so I can return to dancing. I will do this by adding lunchtime walks to my routine and adding Shaun T or other HIIT type sessions to the week
    • Increase my endurance by adding longer walks, as soon as the light allows

    Non exercise goals:

    I want to improve my writing skills this year, I have been writing for ages, but I would like to explore different types of writing and improve to the point where people would like to read it!
    To do this I will:

    • Increase my blogging frequency, even if I just tell you about my gym/walking antics!
    • Start a Substack, as a place to host more different types of writing ( I have already don this, it is here Sam Writes Words)
    • Use my new shiny writers journal that I got as a chritmas pressie from a friend who knows me pretty well!

    I want to turn The Otter Chronicles into a computer game, which means I will have to learn how to write computer games, and how computer games work, and how to illustrate computer games…

    I want to finish creating my Print Studio Caravan workspace so I can restart my printmaking and general crafty hobbies.

    I want to improve my crochet to the point where I can make a bunny, and finish the bunny (I have made one leg so far and it took 6 attempts)

    (I can do blankets, and I am working on different shapes…)

    There are layers and layers of sub plots involved in these goals, and no doubt I will get distracted by other things as they happen throughout the year, but these are a good set to start with 🙂

    Happy new year!

  • Janathon 2025: Day 2

    Which was, of course yesterday… I am staying true to form so far…

    Yesterday was the same as the day before, I went for a walk and did some yoga, it was the same walk, but different yoga.

    The excellent thing about the walk was that I got out there and did it during my lunchbreak. It was lovely to get away from my desk and out in the fresh air. I used to do this all the time but have got out of the habit after moving house. The other excellent thing was the sunshine! It was a lovely bright day and I could actually appreciate the views from the hill I walked up!

    I am going to use this walk as a benchmark to see how much fitter/faster/ etc I am getting, I am not expecting huge leaps but some improvement would be nice after several months of not getting out and walking!

    Yoga was not the same, it was day 2 of YWA Flow series. Just to be clear this is not the flow type yoga where it is all fluid and complicated, that is just the name of the series. I can’t do fluid and complicated yet

    Molly-cat did not join me for long enough for a picture today, she helpfully wandered under my face while I was in downward dog but that is all!

  • Janathon 2025: Day one – walking and yoga

    Well it’s that time of year again, by which I mean the start…

    Yes I know I have barely posted since the middle of last year, I have no excuses, just life happened and busyness was all around.

    Anyway not to dwell on that, it’s the time of year where I sign up for Janathon, then post a day or two (or several) late every time…

    So starting as we mean to go on, here is Day 1 on the 2nd of Jan!

    I did Day 1’s exercise on the 1st though, I promise!

    I started out by going for an accidental walk, it was accidental because we only went out to suss out where to park when we went for walks, and make sure it was somewhere I can get to in my lunchbreak while I am working from home. When we got there, we decided that we may as well actually go for a walk. It wasn’t a long one because it was damp, and nearly sunset, and I wanted to suss out how far I could get on my lunchtime walks.

    It was, however up a big hill so more cardio benefit was accrued than the length of the walk would suggest 🙂

    Here are pictures of it!

    It was nice to be able to get out and about after all the gales and fog and torrential down pours we have been having 😀

    Later on, after some moderate activity taking down the christmas decorations, I actually did the exercise I had planned for the day.

    If you have been here a while you will know that along with my Janathon tradition, I have a Yoga with Adriene 30 days of yoga tradition, in which I sign up and get a part of the way through when other things get in the way. Last year it was a house move which meant I didn’t get far at all!

    This year Adriene is not doing a 30 day’s of Yoga challenge, but that is ok, I am going to do last years instead and I really want to get all the way through it this time!

    Here is a picture of that too:

    So that was day 1…

    I do have goals etc for 2025 which I will be telling you all about in due course, I promise! I just have to get them nailed down as specifics rather than the vagaries that are in my head at the moment!

  • Happy New (Blogging) Year

    Well it’s been 11 years (and two months :-/ sorry)! Those of you who have been around from the start (is there anyone here from the start?) will know that I started this blog at midsummer as a way to keep myself accountable for my 365 exercise challenge that also started at midsummer.

    That is why the URL for this post is midsummer365project.com. The blog name wasn’t ever that I don’t think… It might have been for a while, but for a long time it was Project Fit Enough to Dance in a Mask and now it is Project Warrior Goddess.

    But I seem to have got off track, my point was, it’s been (more than) 11 years, I have had this blog and been telling you (more and more sporadically) about my exercise shenanigans, and various other things that have made their way in to my mind over the years.

    So traditionally this is where we look back over the last year and review and make goals and such… so the last year has been an interesting one… the middle of 2023 was peak trying to move house season in my household and it went on… and on… and on until we finally moved on january 8th 2024! It was a saga, you can read about it here: House saga

    So training wise the last 6 months of 2023 and the first month of 2024 was a bit of a write off, but that’s ok things just go like that sometimes! When we got settled (ish) I found a gym, then I found a trainer, then I had 3 PT sessions a week for 2 months! It was a good kickstart and it found me a gym that was a good place to train while i got myself sorted out and it found me a new trainer…who I eventually decided was not the trainer for me but it helped me get back into consistent training!

    There are some pictures, of me at my new gym… well not MY new gym but the new gym that i joined…

    MY new gym came next… by which I mean we sorted out the shed gym and I haven’t trained anywhere else since. Although I should as I paid for a whole year at the other gym so I should at least use it once or twice!

    Here are some pictures of the shed gym for you:

    It’s awesome! and I am not sure if I have done a proper gym tour, I will do that but for now suffice it to say my gem is amazing! It has so much space!

    I also signed up for the Power up Project with Chloe Brennan, which was amazing! you can read about the start of it here: Power up Project.

    I have just finished it at the end of August and it was amazing, I have become more confident, and stronger.. what more could anyone ask for! I will do a full Power up Project lessons post soon I promise! For now, here is a montage of my end of project new era PBs!

    So what is next for Project Warrior Goddess?

    Well I am fully back into training consistently and enjoying it, so I defintiely want to keep that up…

    Which is why I have signed up for the subscription continuation of the power up project, this is a group personal training / programme arrangement from Chloe and her team which gives me a strongwoman programme to follow that is updated weekly! It is based on 4 sessions a week which is doable 😀

    So what else?

    Well… I want to get back to adding cardio into the mix. Whether this is an Insanity variant or running / walking up hills remains to be seen, I imagine it will be a mixture of all of them!

    I also want to continue with the mobility work I started over the last couple of months. I have come to appreciate that it is really important to keep yourself mobile as well as strong, so that is what I will be doing!

    So this is the plan for the next year (or at least the plan for the next period of time until I decide on a new plan)

    • 4 strength / strongwoman sessions a week (at least)
    • 3 cardio sessions a week (at least)
    • some mobility work every day (even if it is only 5 minutes)

    That is the plan, and here are my getting in ahead of time excuses:

    For the next 2 months, my work schedule is going to see me travelling a lot, I am going to be working 2 hrs away from home most days until the end of october. However I am going to do my absolute best to carry on with my training goals, because work life balance is a thing!

    I can’t promise to be perfect, but I will do my best, and in November I will revisit these goals and recommit to them!

    I will also do my utmost to keep you all informed of what is going on, after all what is the point of having an eleven year old blog if you don’t use it!

  • Juneathon Day 11 – 24: facing my fears… or lots of jumping!

    Ok at this point it is note really worth me adding the Juneathon days as I have basically gone for half of June without blogging , but I am going to put them there anyway as I have been doing the exercise portion of the thing!

    Lots of things (well some of the thing) I have been doing the last two weeks have involved some jumping… actually quite a lot of jumping and even some jumping on to things! This is quite a big thing for a person who has developed a higher than average fear of slipping off things and breaking their ankle…

    I am doing my best to retrain my brain when it come to this and recently i have made a good step (or in fact jump) forward!

    The things I have done that involved jumping first and foremost are my Power Up Project workouts which from week six onwards have developed box jumps! The springy people in the world, including the lovely coach Chloe Brennan, demonstrate this move by springing without difficulty onto a box that is 12″ or 20″ high or even higher in some cases…

    Needless to say this is not me box jumping, you can tell in two ways… firstly it doesn’t look like me and second, there is not a hope in hell of me jumping onto anything that high!

    I decided to start very low and the fact that I even managed this was amazing to me, box jumps are both hard and terrifying! So I started with a 4″ step…

    Now to many people this is not even a jump more a little hop and defintiely not a box jump, but to me it represents a lot of fears and a lot of overcoming fears! I did the jumps and I didn’t die! And to be honest, at the beginning of the year I don’t think i would haven have been springy enough for this little jump so I am very proud!

    I am even more proud that the next week (this tuesday just gone) I managed to add one set of risers onto the step and do 6″ jumps!

    look at that jumping! It is quite hard to convey just how much of an achievement this is for me! The other set of jumping antics are more familiar on this blog, they are as part of Shaun T Insanity / Insanity max 30 and T25 work outs.

    I have modified quite a lot of the moves, but not all of them. Or more accurately, I have modified all of the moves, but not all of all of them.. .I have tried to jump at least some of each of the jumpy moves if I possibly could!

    In case you hadn’t noticed, I am also continuing with the challenge of videoing myself doing things… you do only get my feet and legs in the cardio workouts though!

    I am extremely proud of all the jumping… it seems silly, but I had got to the point where I believed I couldn’t jump, and if I did try to do, for example, a jumping jack that involved any lateral movement or directing changes, my brain would keep feeding my the possibility that I would cockle over and break my ankle…

    So this really is progress!

    The rest of the things I have done have been lifting up the heavy things and putting them down again, and also some standing on one leg and wiggling my ankles (or mobility if you prefer…) the period of time that this post is spanning has got ridiculous now so I am just going to tell you that I have done something every day, and show you a load of pictures and videos of it all!