Coach Kirstin

In the 16 years since my car accident that caused my knee injury I have learned the most important thing to keeping my knee healthy is regular exercise and strength training. I normally don't have much trouble with this but that last 4 weeks have been completely out of the norm. I spent a week sick, the next week recovering and training a bit but the two weeks after that I have no good real excuse. I quit teaching at KMDC and thus lost my usual place to train. Sounds like a valid reason except I have an entire gym worth of equipment sitting in my living room. Mats, kick shield, tombstones, heavy bag, hurdles, I have my own Thai pads and focus mitts, there's even a timer if I wanted to use it. But I haven't. I've been trying to rectify the situation which has caused there to be an entire gym in my living room. The lease for my school. We had been hung out to dry by our leasing company for the last 5 weeks. But the stars aligned and they signed the lease last Thursday. S...

For those that don't know I'm a creature of habit. I actually love them. It's what keeps me on time and with everything I need when I get there. It's also the reason I leave the house with my teeth brushed every day. Yes, I have been brushing my teeth all my life but I have a lot going on in my head and if I don't stick with my routine, I forget to do things like brush my teeth. And I know this because there have been too many Saturday classes when I go to teach and realize I should grab a mint because I didn't stick with my routine and forgot to brush my teeth. Part of it is all the things going on in my life but the bigger part is a brain injury I had. I was in a pretty severe car accident and hit my head, damaging my short term memory. So habits became my way of dealing with it. But this week, I realized my habits might be getting the best of me. After training at night, I shower and then head to bed with wet hair, by morning it's dry and I can curl it in...

I have a confession, I know your not supposed to do it but without fail I get on the scale every morning. After I pee of course to ensure I'm measuring the same thing every day. I know this isn't a good habit. I know daily weights mean very little. Which I can attest to because regardless of eating the same thing (yes I can say I eat the same thing several days in a row, which is a whole other post already in the works) with the same workout, I'd have a different weight each day. Sometimes a lot. Some times a little but it always varies. So post phase I was feeling a little thinner so tested it out but no change in weight. This actually doesn't ever bother me because I'm more at a point of trying to change my body composition than loosing weight, yeah I know that's about as contrary as it gets to weighing yourself everyday. But then I got sick. Which for me usually means the scale ticks up just a bit because while I may not really understand taking it easy I do ...