Coach Kirstin

There isn't a day that I don't walk out of the gym without a new bruise on me. Unless I just do S&C but I think that's happened twice. And I have been known to bruise doing that too. So when you bruise often, you watch them. A lot. Especially if you wear a skirt. Ever. And you know how fast they tend to disappear. But when they don't follow the normal schedule, I get paranoid. I had a mild vitamin K poisoning about two years ago, only noticeable by the bruise that never disappeared and my inability to choke down a spinach salad (the culprit) since. So I have had a bruise on my bicep that I have had for 6 days. Uncharacteristically long. I know it's not Vit K so it has to be a combination of my diet (or lack thereof) in the past week and lack of sleep. In other words, my inability to take care of myself. I'll probably never know which it is because both of these factors go hand in hand with me. But next week I'll be back to my routine, I'm actually o...

So I did a jiu jitsu tournament this past weekend. I did it purely for the experience of competing, not because I like bjj. I haven't competed in 5 months and figured I needed to shake the jitters a little. The only matches I cared about were my no-gi matches. Lets be honest, I just don't know what I'm doing in a gi. And thus I don't like it. It's not like sex, where the first time you didn't know what you were doing but it felt good so you kept doing it. Nope. I didn't know what I was doing and it made it even worse. So this weekend, I won my no-gi match and then had my gi match. I was facing the girl I just beat in no-gi, knew she trained extensively in the gi and had a moment of panic that I don't know what I'm doing in the gi. I was walking to my match and thought "it's ok if she beats me, I don't really care". And then we slapped hands. It's like the little green monster takes over and I must win. There's nothing on the...

Do you ever find it weird the things that gross you? Or that don't. Today someone was brushing their teeth in the sink at my office. And I was so grossed out by it. But I clench with every person in the gym and they rub their sweat all over me. I get pinned to the mat and rubbed all in it. I get traingled or arm barred and don't even think twice about where my head is. ...but I find it gross when someone washes their teeth in the sink. I guess it's all how you view the world through your lens.