As is now customary, it is my midsummer happy new year post 😀

Well, it had to be done didn’t it! It is a lot happier than last year’s too!

I know its late… but its a pretty unconventional Happy New Year post, it can be whenever it likes!

A lot has happened in the last year, in the actual world as well as in my world. Not least of which is this global pandemic that has seen everyone thrown into lockdown and me into a very odd working from home situation. Its not a bad situation, I can cope with it because I am extremely lucky that I have managed to source my of gym gear and have a house/garden/husband that I like spending time in/with! 😀 I will see if I can come up with some new year goals, but with the gym closures and the lockdown limbo still in effect, they may be sketchy…

I know I have been lax in my Project Lockdown Fitness posting, and My Juneathon posts went by the wayside… but the important thing is, I have not stopped exercising during this time. In fact I have been doing so much exercise that I haven’t found a lot of time for much else!

I could do a reprise here of everything I have been doing, but that could take a while as I think it is about 20 days worth, so I am going to skip ahead and tell you all about Thursday which was the final day of the 60 Days of Digging Deep with Shaun T challenge I have been doing.

This challenge was brilliant, it was hard work, physically but also mentally. It was about working out hard, but also about digging deep to do the best that I could. Now I thought I always did that, but during this programme, and particularly the last week of it, I discovered a whole new level of digging deep.

I discovered that I could now, much to my surprise, do things like power jumps and jumps from side to side and all sorts of jumps really… not brilliantly but I could do them. I discovered that I was modifying a lot of the moves out of habit and fear, I actually had the ability to do them and just needed that little extra push.

I discovered that, although I still believe there is no such thing as too much exercise, it is possible that doing a full on Shaun T 60 days programme and a full on Strongwoman training programme at the same time, is hard work and that I have to allow myself enough time to recover.

I am not very good at that last thing…

The main thing I discovered, or should I say rediscovered, is that I am fit and strong and capable of anything. Whats more this has nothing to do with my body shape of size! I know, I knew this anyway, or at least I said this anyway, but there was the nagging doubt in my mind that I wasn’t really good enough to do things, because I wasn’t thin enough.

I know now, that this is just not true, I always believed if for other people, but never for myself… (yeah, I know internalised fatphobia :-/)

So I guess you could say that I have learned to see through the society driven rubbish, and that taking part in everything I have taken part in this last 60 days has given me back my confidence!

I can actually say, I am really proud of myself for doing this!

Things I can do now that I couldn’t do at the start of this…

Power jumps, Push-up jacks, jumping sideways and backwards, switch kicks where you actually jump from one foot to the other, work out for 50 minutes, then do the insanity fit test and still beat my numbers!

I can walk around proudly knowing I have don this, and that I can do these things that I couldn’t do before!

I also did other things strongwoman things and I am stronger, I can lift 10kg more overhead than I could at the start of lockdown, I can deadlift 10kg more, I can carry more than I thought was sensible, I can squat 15kg more, I can bench press about 10kg more…

I am strong!

(not only stronger than I was, but actually strong too)

It’s been a rollercoaster of a year, both within Project Warrior Goddess and in the wider world!  I would traditionally use this mid year point to re-evaluate and set myself some revised goals. I am going to do that, after all I am a creature of habit, but I am going to wait until the next post for that. I have come so far, in the last 10 weeks that I need to work out the sensible next step!

I do have a strongwoman comp coming up you know, although not quite as soon as I thought due to this pesky pandemic! So I suspect my new goals will relate to that quite a lot…

I’ll keep you posted 🙂