Coach Kirstin

Almost 3 years ago to the date I'm in Vegas with the 3 people that got me watching my first MMA and UFC fight. I had no idea what it even was. I'd been training in Krav for all of about 3 months, listening to people talk all about the ultimate fighter and not knowing what it was. I went to Eve and J's house for the flippy cup tournament....a trophy was on the line and we all know I can't loose. BTW I did and had to wear a Lobo shirt because of it. I just don't know how to back down from a challenge, even at flippy cup. And here I am, 3 years later at a fight in Vegas. Getting ready for my first fight. Rocking a pull up challenge. Deciding on which gym I'll fight for. Owning my own gym.

Its always about winning. If I said it any other way, Id be lying. To myself and you. There was a time in my life I tried to convince myself that I wasnt competitive. Im not really sure who I was fooling. I really just don't like to loose. Some how I found a way to make everything competitive, maybe thats part of having a little sister whos better at every sport than you. So I found things I was better than her at. But I find a way to make the dumbest stuff competitive. Skee ball. I kept challenging my coworker at a company party last week (hes really my employee but I dont feel like his boss, more like his friend) to skee ball, even though I was terrible at it. Because I really just didnt want to loose. Words with friends. Simplest game. But I keep re-chalenging people because I dont want to loose. And then it comes to training. I get so irritated with people not doing technique right but they think they are beating or better than me. If I did a broad jump like th...

Eggs are like the perfect food.  They have a great balance of protein and fat.  And I couldn't eat them.  I would eat a boiled egg white but that's all I could handle.  I had food poisoning my first Thanksgiving home after starting college and the food of association was eggs.  In 1998.  So for the last 13 years I avoided eggs.  Id try them and my stomach would turn.  And brunch/ breakfast was getting really boring.  So many fun things done with eggs but I couldn't eat them.  And if your from New Mexico like me, you only eat eggs as a conduit to eating salsa or green chile (and yes that is the correct spelling).  Last winter, as I helped my then boyfriend prepare for his fight, the reality of eggs for breakfast became all to clear.  So I started with egg whites, adding bacon and adding cheese.  It worked out pretty well.  And then last weekend I went to Belga with two good friends.  And they raved about the stea...

To say there has been a lot going on in my life in the last week, is an understatement. On par, I wasn't getting a whole lot of sleep and in typical fashion I found some trouble to get myself into last night which didn't get me much sleep.  So the one day I usually have to catch up on sleep and relax was pretty busy with brunch with a dear friend and then my usual yoga and dinner with my best friend.  I pondered for a bit of bailing on brunch, but its only taken this friend and I about 3 months to find a day for brunch that we were both free and I really miss him since we don't see each other at work anymore, so that seemed like a bad idea.  Then I thought about yoga.  And having skipped it a bit lately, I was a little intimidated by going yoga.  On a good day, my practice at Down Dog is pretty intense but here I was short on sleep and energy....and I was letting my yoga practice intimidate me.  I thought "I'll just use the broken toe as my excuse."  ...

It takes a special friend to pick up on the little things you say.  Sometimes you may not even realize what you are talking about is that big of a deal to you, but someone else notices. And that's how I got the best Christmas gift.... So there is this thing called cauliflower ear .  To grapplers its some strange badge of honor.  I find it rather gross.  And I find it even less attractive on myself.  Hence the reason why I got my very own ear guards when my dear friend Holly had to have her ear drained.  I was pretty good about wearing them, despite feeling like the biggest dork ever.  And then someone borrowed them and never returned them.  Not world ending until the last 3 weeks when I kept getting cracked in the ear and waking up with swollen ears that hurt, leaving me with even more irritation about the jackass I lent mine to.  And I love my friends, because one said "well if you need me to, I can drain your ears, I do it for Peter (her ...

So Jen and I were doing our meal planning last week, and the new Green Grocer list came out and it had Portobellos.  Needing to make good use of this fantastic fungus the plan changed and we decided on a recipie from Everyday Paleo for Giant Stuffed Mushrooms .  Only things I changed about the recipie was I only used half an onion (had half left over from previous meal and didnt want another half sitting around that I probably wont use), I used bread crumbs instead of coconut flour (because Im not hard core paleo) and I didnt run it through a food processor.  Moslty because I didnt have one but secondly I like my food in a form most like what it started off as.  Relative I know when Im using ground meat but the chunks of all the other stuff was what I really cared about. I was little concerned because I have texture issues with celery and onions but it went just fine.  I actually made this on Monday night, knowing I would get back late Tuesday.  ...

Normally I train quite a bit every day, after putting in a full days work as a project manager.  Ill define quite a bit as 3-4 hours every night at the gym and at least that on Saturdays.  Usually I can squeeze in 90 minutes of heated yoga on the weekend with my girlfriend also.  Add that to getting a new business off the ground and my sleep is scheduled in so that I get 7 hours every night.  It rarely happens because I seem to always find something else to occupy myself with and don't get to bed on time.  So I average about 5-6 a night.  Yes I know how bad this is for me.  So needless to say, when I lay down, I pass out like a dead person.  Except Sunday night.  Because on Sundays I prepare for the week with laundry, cooking, cleaning, business stuff, phone call to dad and pretty much anything else I can cram in.  Except those 3 hours in the gym.  And I just don't get tired. I kind of feel like the girl I saw on Intervention, excep...

For those that dont know....my life revolves around food.  I have gone to New York for less than 30 hours, spending way too much money just to eat my way through the San Gennaro Festival .  All because I heard thats where you get the best cannoli's.  And any one knows, Italian in DC is terrible.  I mean like Olive Garden terrible.  Ok maybe not that bad, but its nothing I would waste my calories on.  And I have wasted calories on many things.  Irony is that I will somehow be losing ~18 pounds to hit 135 for my fight.  The trick will be to do it while still enjoying food. On my previous attempt at cutting weight, food became merely energy.  I actually got vitamin K poisoning because my food ratio was so off for the amount of spinach I was eating.  9 months later, I still gag when eating spinach.  For me, its a very sad day when food isn't enjoyable.  On the path to making that possible, I had redo of a previous recipe I tried. ...

So I’m just loving my new roomie.  She’s fun, independent and outgoing.  Says the funniest things and we have a good time hanging out.  When I came home last night she tells me “Just seeing you makes me want to eat protein.”  I actually might start posts just about the funny things she says.  She’s been a great friend and super supportive of everything I do.  Even from Afghanistan, she was a huge supporter of getting my business off the ground.  Add to that she has agreed to diet with me for my fight, which makes our living situation 10 times easier.  She is a part of this great thing called Green Grocer .  Though despite her nudges, it still intimidates me.  Apparently I have some abnormal fear of preparing fresh vegetables, hence the reason I alternate between bags frozen broccoli and frozen green beans.  Yet I continue to experiment and try different meats. Sometimes I get a little crazy and add Old Bay or Season Salt. For my...

It's a funny thing when someone can manipulate you into something. When they can hold something over you. When they have leverage over you. They can treat you badly. Force you to do something you don't agree with. All because they have leverage over you. We always try and keep those things that are our leverage points to ourselves. But sometimes we wear them on our sleeves like I do. It's what this blog is all about. My training. The only thing you could hold over me. You can try. But it's a fantastic feeling when you come up with a plan and have the ability to say fuck off.

So I was washing my face tonight and notices a pretty sizeable abrasion on my forehead. I believe it came from burning myself with the curling iron, yes a whole other story of how one can still burn them selves after 24 or 25 years of using a curling iron. I say believe because I don't remember getting hit on the head or running into anything. Of course fighters also say they weren't knocked out when their head was being dribbled off the mat like a basketball. And I say it's sizeable because it's about a quarter but more so because no one mentioned anything to me. Which I can only decipher means one of two things. First, I regularly hurt myself so much so that it's become the norm. Or second is that I come out of training with so many scrapes and bruises that this is just par for the course. The funny thing is, I think I burned myself Wednesday, so I didn't notice either.