Miranda’s fitness journey has been long and fraught with upset. An extremely active child, her life literally changed due to a back injury at seventeen; doctors said that if she didn’t have immediate and extensive surgery, she wouldn’t be able to walk on her own by thirty. She didn’t have the surgery, and she’s walking on her own. Although she isn’t yet where she wants to be with her own fitness goals, she truly believes that going far means going together.

Miranda has tried several different ways of getting into, and most importantly, sticking with fitness. Traditional gyms weren’t to her liking, and many fitness classes always left a little something to be desired. She started looking into interesting and different modes of training and found that steel mace, kettlebell, clubbell, calisthenics and other less traditional methods really clicked with her. Miranda enjoys steel mace so much that she is certified in Steel Mace Yoga, as well as TacFit (formerly VKNJA) Steel Mace; finding it one of the most dynamic and engaging tools of fitness.

Miranda is ELF HEMA’s head instructor here in Gowanda. Since officially opening in May of 2023, she has highly enjoyed setting out on the new task of head instructor, and looks forward to teaching and learning HEMA here in Gowanda for hopefully years to come! Miranda was a coach at Nickel City Longsword Academy from 2020 to 2023, where she enjoyed both learning and teaching Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) with Coach Rob. She was an assistant coach for Nickel City’s beginner Longsword, as well as the coach for Sidesword and Poleweapons.

In her free time, Miranda is a genre fiction writer (mostly for fun); a table top roleplaying enthusiast (and game publisher); a student of history, philosophy and cultural studies; an amateur chef; a dedicated cat-mom, and a colossal goofball.