Active Em

The nature of my job at BTRS means that I have had the opportunity to meet some amazing people. I had the pleasure of interviewing Ellie Sayers a few weeks ago, learning about her brain tumour journey and how she manages to keep active despite it. Ellie is from Castleford, she is 21 and living with a brain tumour. She was diagnosed almost four years ago after she had become very poorly on a holiday in Tenerife. Ellie told me that she spent almost the entire holiday asleep because she felt so tired, she was seeing black spots and felt very unwell. When she returned to the UK she ended up having to go to A&E where they conducted an emergency MRI scan. Ellie was told that she had a brain tumour. She went home for one night and retuned the next day. Days after being diagnosed she underwent emergency surgery, it was too dangerous to leave the operation any later. Whilst Ellie was recovering from her operation she discovered that she was pregnant. On leaving hospital she was faced with h...

On Tuesday 4th September I think the whole city was sensing the slight air of disappointment at going back to school, college or work. Honestly, I never used to mind going back to school because I am a bit of a nerd. Anyway! The Leeds Girls Can Ambassadors team had a little bit of a treat planned to give us something fun to do on a Tuesday evening. Leeds Aerial Arts very kindly hosted a lesson for us in beginner’s aerial hoop. Aerial hoop is literally what you would imagine seeing at the circus, acrobatic tricks done on a suspended hoop. I really did not know what to expect. All I knew was that I shouldn’t really eat too much before I attempted any acrobatic moves for obvious reasons. We arrived and were greeted by Lorna our very friendly and fun instructor. Lorna took us through the basics of how to get on and off the hoop properly. You had to hold onto the hoop at the bottom and tuck your legs in above yourself, hooking one foot onto the hoop. Then, you placed your legs over the ...

  'Rachel and Emily' taken by Rais Hasan                 It seems pretty obvious, but when it comes to fitness, setting goals is a great motivation. I’m generally a little bit different from most of the fitness industry with my attitude, I’m never really aiming to lose weight, be able to lift heavier in a certain amount of time, and I never make myself train a certain number of times a week. This is because in general, I like to train to feel healthy and happy. Yet, I completely get why setting goals is important and a fantastic way to be active. It's also very very good when you've lost motivation to train. At Leeds Girls Can we have the attitude of being active for yourself, not to please or impress others, but to push yourself and widen your comfort zone that little bit more. This often does involve a challenge! Earlier this year I went along to the Week 1 Kirkstall Couch to 5k session. This means that the ladies at this session were ...

Wolf whistling. Fairly common place but increasingly people are beginning to take more notice of it and challenge it. It seems that this is a fairly controversial issue to discuss but what I'm trying to understand is why is it so controversial? Is it controversial because it offends the offenders? Isn’t that highly ironic? Some do perceive cat calling as complimentary but I would argue that this is the minority and that in reality, given the choice, women would probably rather be complimented during a conversation, not in an intimidating and lairy fashion. One of my friends told me that it massively depends on what mood she’s in, sometimes a whistle boosts her self-confidence, but other days makes her feel anxious. I know that she would much rather be complimented during a genuine conversation. After putting it out there and asking people for their experiences I had a lot of feedback and some interesting points came up. One of my friends told me that she regularly gets whistled a...

Since the World Cup came to an end we’ve had a little bit of time to reflect on it. I have had lots of interesting conversations with women about their experiences of watching the football, being fans and what they think about the relationship between women and football. I can’t help but feel disappointed, not just by the result for England, but by the way that football culture has treated women during this World Cup.  That  ‘hottest fans’ Getty Images post that got taken down from Twitter and the ‘babe cam’? What’s it all about? Georgia Rannard wrote a fantastic article for the BBC questioning how much sexism in football has changed? Not as much as you would hope it seems. I don’t for one second think that the majority of male football fans would turn around and tell me not to watch football because I’m female. I think it’s pretty well accepted that in 2018 that just wouldn’t be okay. What interests me is why do men who would otherwise be very welcoming of female fans, contin...

‘No you’re not seeing things, this is a bike on water’ ... is exactly what we told the man enjoying his Friday evening pint as we made our way through the locks in the centre of Leeds. Prepare yourself to hear about Leeds Girls Can most epic adventure yet. It was Friday morning, 22 nd June. From 9 o’clock Kirsty and I made our way to Castleford Marina. After parking up and unloading our numerous bags of snacks (priorities) we caught our first glimpse of THE waterbike. A water bike, otherwise known as a Schiller Bike is a nifty piece of technology. The bike rests on two pontoons and is reasonably stable, nobody even fell in to the water (although there were a few close incidents). Before setting off we loaded the baggage, a big bucket and a litter grabbing stick onto the bike. The Waterbike Collective is a campaign that can be described as a 1000 mile community waterbike adventure collecting one million pieces of litter. People can volunteer to take a stretch of British waterways, usi...

I’ve started my day off in a pretty bad mood, the amount of content I need to revise today makes me just want to go back to bed, a continual stream of emails from estate agents informing me that they don’t offer short term lets is giving me a headache as the house search continues and lots of laundry and house jobs to do is not ideal. It’s safe to say that exercise is not at the top of my list of priorities. The third main area that This Girl Can has identified that women in Britain are worried about being judged for, is seeming to not have their priorities in order. The top reasons are that women feel they should be prioritising spending time with their family, friends, working/studying or doing other “more important” jobs than exercising. This is certainly how I feel today, surely I should be prioritising my exams over a session at the gym right? But when I stop and think about it, a gym session is exactly what I need to get out of my bad mood and into a more productive head space...