sources

here are the links to the images I used in my blog posts:

- https://www2.nau.edu/wordpress-mu/plaid/files/2012/03/healthy_living-12rnho3.gif
-http://www.rafu.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/soko_dojo-for-web.jpg
- http://madisoncollege.edu/files/users/wbessette/self-defense.jpg
-http://www.arikdaophotography.com/San-Jose-Buddhist-Judo-Club/Special-Events/Keiko-Fukuda-Sensei-Portrait/i-w7MMkTs/0/L/keikoFukuda201108040002-L.jpg
-https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/1385829153/El_HaLev_logo._5x5.jpg
-http://www.clutchmagonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/black-woman-reading-library-book.jpeg
-http://sustainabilitymanagement2013.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/bigstockphoto_middle_eastern_business_woman__39148281.jpg
-http://www.idonotwanttobeyourlawyer.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Waiting_for_phone_call.jpg
-http://www.tptherapy.com/site/trigger/img/images_information_items/Trigger_Point_Front_body.jpg
-http://www.blogcdn.com/www.aisledash.com/media/2010/03/woman-lifting-weights-arms590wy031610.jpg
-http://kgi.org/sites/default/files/checklist.jpg
-http://www.self.com/blogs/flash/NotHateWorkoutClass-595.jpg
-http://www.growtallerkey.com/grow-taller-exercises/img/toe-touching-grow-taller-stretching-exercise.jpg
-http://splits59.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/3941735162_d4d72379ae.jpg
-http://www.associaliving.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/july2011neighborexercies.jpg
-http://media.onsugar.com/files/2010/11/45/4/192/1922729/5ecc2a37c8ab7311_gym-towel.xlarge.jpg
-http://0.tqn.com/d/running/1/0/J/4/-/-/treadmill-runner.jpg
-http://mommasaid.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/spin-class.jpg
-http://www.quickanded.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/graduation-cap-in-air.jpg
-https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXAul056wNO3DsP6LoNeEM1QlMdVdO7hGC4zFwnMd27vdTELnSWf3zKqVe9LmgHQ0IiDlLBcNuAeHVApowBBnTKB4FZN-uLSOGas-hebxlWAbE6pCFnGzPp-dmpz32FcH2O63341ZHE5FA/s1600/Walked+with+God.jpg

spiritual componenet

How could I forget!? Our spiritual component for Keystone was due today.  I wrote about the Jewish value of a healthy body. I found myself so intrigued by what the Talmud, Mishenh Torah and modern rabbis had to say about the value of physical activity. To my surprise, exercise is more then just a modern day fad but a Torah commandment. I think that this is really cool- I am not only  exercising to increase my health and increase my strength, but also, by exercising I am able to walk in more in the image of God (imitatio dei).

interview

After I worked with Yudit both on our Sunday workshop and JCHS workshop, we were emailing back and forth and we finally concluded the interview we had started on April 7th in the Judo club before our workshop. The major points I concluded from our interview was that martial arts/ judo/ self-defense held more value to her then just being a sport she did for physical fitness. She didn't used to be interested in self-defense at all; abrupt and violent moves weren't actions she felt she could do to an attacker, let alone teach to mass audiences. So how did she overcome that fear? Martial arts and self-defense came to Yudit in a way most people would never want to have to be introduced to a sport. It was not out of new love for this physical activity, it was out of fear for her safety. Yudit's marriage was rocky and Judo was something that was her's, as she said "Judo was mine". As she progressed, her admiration, appreciation, and passion for the sport grew, along with her physical and emotional strength, and she got out of her unwanted marriage. She founded El Halev in 2003 with the goal to "effect social change through empowering women of all ages and reducing violence against women, teens, children, seniors and people with special needs by means of training in the martial arts and self-defense." After spending time with her one on one, with a group, interviewing her etc I must say I think she has done a very good job of fulfilling that mission.

count down to keystone

Everything is really beginning to fall into place. Tomorrow I will be mailing my certification exam out (something I completed a couple weeks ago just didn't have the time/ motivation to fill out the personal information and mailing information criteria). I am really excited for this! My results should come back in a week (5-7 business days) and I will know if I am a licensed Fitness Kickboxing instructor. I am finishing my Keystone essay as well, adding edits my mentor gave me and feeling like I'm going to be in good shape for my Keystone presentation as it is now in 17 days.

bring it back to school: check

As I said in my last post, on April 7th I organized a group of people to come to Yudit's self defense workshop and helped her facilitate the Sunday class which went very well, and I am very pleased with the outcome. The following Tuesday April 9th, I brought Yudit back to JCHS and had her teach a lesson (similar to the one on Sunday) with JCHS students in the music room. Again, I acted as her assistant. While I do believe it was possibly one of the busiest club blocks of the whole year, we still had a solid turn out, and I am so excited to have my friends learn what I had learned a couple days prior. The more and more I learn about kickboxing and its ancient roots the more interesting the sport becomes to me. While martial arts has self-defense purposes and fitness kickboxing doesn't, I am learning about the heavily focused fitness side of "fitness kickboxing" through my books and videos, but am learning more about the roots of the sport and the self-defense aspect by working with Yudit and reading books for my certification degree. I am really starting to see, especially as I go off to college (specifically as a woman in the world), how important it is that I know how to defend myself and protect my body against. Working with Yudit has really helped me see that.

community service: check

Keiko Fukud

I officially decided my Keystone presentation date. May 21, 8:50 AM. Wow, just writing that makes
me nervous. I never thought this day would come. Thankfully though I have mapped out a very careful plan so that hopefully everything will be absolutely complete by Sunday night (except for my presentation of course).

Let me bring you up to date on what I have been doing. In March I shared a ton of back and forth emails with Yudit, the woman I did community service with. With arranged when we would meet and on April 7th I helped her lead a workshop at Soko Joshi Women's Judo Club (1622 Castro St
San Francisco). Upon request, I arrived at the club at 11:30AM, and until our workshop which was at 3:00PM, the owner of the Judo club, the head Judo instructor/ sensei, Yudit and I sat in the folding chairs facing the studio. We talked about the previous sensei Keiko Fukuda who had just passed away two months prior to our gathering, we talked about the ancient sport of Judo and all different types of martial arts, we exchanged self-defense tips and techniques, and shared and listened to stories of rape and attacks. The experience was actually incredibly enlightening and enjoyable. I had been used to learning primarily about cardio kickboxing and not as much about the martial arts component. Sitting in this Judo club I was learning all about the self-defense component and even practicing different moves that would be used to protect myself, instead of what I was used to doing, which was combinations that gave me fitness benefits.

Judo Club where we did the workshop

By the time the class was supposed to start, I was ready. I had met Yudit, we had spent the last 4 hours together and now we could run through what we had practiced before the group arrived. The class went well, it was nerve racking because everyone who was there came to support me, and I knew them all and had personally emailed them and called them telling them to come to this event and now it was actually happening. Everyone seemed very into what we were teaching though (which was mostly self-defense moves, teaching the power of our voice in the case of an attack and learning how to maneuver our way though an unwanted confrontation. When the course ended at 5, I was so relieved. I had fulfilled my commitment of arranging a group to come take Yudit's workshop, I had worked as her assistant in the actual class and now it was over and the pressure was off.

The people at the workshop were talking about Yudit and her organization El Halev for many days after the event. I am still currently in contact with Yudit, providing her with contact info for different people in the Bay Area interested in her work, while I am also writing her a positive review of her teachings that she can use for advertising purposes. I am really happy that all worked out.

community service component

Part of my keystone project includes a community service aspect that ties my project to an area of community outreach. Not knowing what approach to take with this part of the project, I met with Roni Ben-David who is the head of community outreach at my school (she also does a variety of other great things for the school). The first thing she brought up, was a self-defense program for women called El Halev that was created by a woman named Yudit who lives in Israel. Ron forwarded me the email she had received Yudit. It looked perfect. A great mission- to help women protect themselves, a nice Jewish lady leading it, and a focus on some kickboxing moves. I quickly emailed her back, told her a little about myself, what this senior year project called keystone was, and that I'd love to help her out with anything she needs when she comes to the United States in the spring. She was super excited and emailed back, which made me happy after my first failed attempt to contact a new person.

Now we are in the process of organizing something- which should be great. I'll will update soon on how my paper is going, my certification process is going, and Yudit, my community service leader, is doing.

essay time...

I have been doing more research for the essay I will be writing on fitness kickboxing and have been finding out all these cool parallels between kickboxing and a slew of other sports. I have especially found similarities between ancient Chinese practices such as ti quan do which has influenced fitness kickboxing a great deal.

Furthermore, I love that with cardio kickboxing you don't need anything but yourself, no partner or multiple people are needed to do it, it can be done alone, or in a class with just the resistance of one's own body- the more I learn about fitness kickboxing the more interesting the sport becomes.

no response

Eager for more contacts, I began emailing back in forth with a personal trainer I met through my mom at the gym. I asked her a few questions about certification websites to make sure I was picking a credible and trusted certification organization and after some back and forth  emails was leaning towards the certification program by AFPA (American Fitness Professionals and Associates). Knowing that I wanted to purchase there certification program, I just wanted to make sure it was a good idea and thought I would consult a practicing fitness kickbox instructor.

I found the last name of one of my favorite instructors online. I called her, it went to voice mail and left a message and I ended it by asking if she could call me back, that I just wanted to talk about certification programs. She didn't call back. Thinking about it, it will be kind of awkward when I start going back to her classes. 

new contacts!

In the past few months I have been contacting a lot of cool people in the fitness industry. My go to resource from the beginning had been Linda, but she was mainly the one who introduced me to the idea of becoming an instructor and I needed more people to help me along with the process. Because of this, I've contacted a variety of different people, which has actually been a cool learning experience. (Surprise, surprise! My Keystone project is helping me with everyday life.)

In December I saw my absolute favorite fitness kickbox instructor, Colin Turek, who had recently moved an hour north and now was only teaching, if we were lucky, once a month. He was sitting down in the lobby of our gym on his phone. I really wanted to introduce myself and say how much I enjoyed his classes, and let him know who I was, but I was incredibly nervous. I paced a couple times by him shyly, still a little worried, I pretended to watch the sports game on the TV in front of him until I'm pretty sure he was sufficiently creeped out and convinced I was wacko. At that point, I went over and introduced myself. I told him that I was in the process of becoming a fitness kickboxing instructor and we chatted for a few minutes. As I was leaving,  he said if I needed any help, I could contact him. Thrilled and excited I was a little surprised by how nice and friendly he was.

recovery process

My recovery process began as I started seeing Rocky Wang more regularly (the acupuncturist I told you about in my last post). Although I have come to see that he is the best, at first I was absolutely mortified about getting needles put in me and was unsure if this man so many people said saved him could really help me. However, as I started realizing how valuable these needles were, I allowed him to put more in, and just last week he put his record amount: four needles!

I also recently began seeing a man named Michael Westgate. He uses trigger point therapy to re-engage muscles to do their appropriate jobs correctly. (Trigger points are places in the body that are extremely sensitive/ irritable and because they are inflamed, they contribute to muscle pain).

From both these modes of recovery I have seen a huge change in my pain which has given me the pleasure and ability to go back to the gym. I go on the stationary bike at the gym, yes, but it is a fancier bike thus I can set it to work with me giving me a better workout. Plus as I said in my last post- I have moved to doing a little bit of weights again as well!

setback...

Just when I am being counted on to exercise for this project, as opposed to just exercising for my own pure pleasure, I get injured. I've had 2 bike accidents in my life, the more recent one was last spring. That accident left me unable to exercise for 2.5 months... with no ability to even do light cardio or weights by any means. However, after those months of recovery after my accident, I got going working out back in full force until October. Leading up to September my back was always tight, I was constantly stretching it, or attempting to to no avail, but besides that, there was no massive aching. But as September rolled around it was beginning to hurt, and hurt all the time. A dull aching when caring my bag around school, soreness when sitting, and an all around slight discomfort. But of course, I didn't stop excising for very little could stop me from working out each day. Even if I was sick I would make myself sweat through it for that one precious hour of cardio. But as September turned into October and the pain didn't subside and in fact got worse, I began cutting down my workouts. I couldn't run for my normal hour, my back hurt, my hips hurt, my knees hurt, I felt like I was completely falling apart. After each workout I would come home squeezing my back with my hands trying to kneed out whatever was holding me back from my physical dreams of pushing my body and doing the most weights and jump swats I could. It went on like that for a month until for a week in a row I would come back home from my workouts crying because I just couldn't do it and my back just wouldn't support me, and for the rest of the day it would be in aching pain.

My mom, frustrated almost as much as I was seeing her kid unable to do her favorite hobby and in pain all the time, called a highly referred acupuncturist. Long story short, he told me I had to stop exercising said I had scar tissue in my psoas muscle in my back (a muscle in the lumbar region of the back which also makes up a huge part of the hip flexors).

Despite tears and massive frustration, I didn't work out for 2 weeks upon my trusted acupuncturists advice. After two weeks jittery as a hummingbird I spent an hour on the stationary bike on no resistance. I continued doing that everyday however I felt like I was getting no exercise, and for three months I mentally suffered with just doing that. In the beginning of February I began going to the gym again. Instead of using the stationary bike in my house, I used the one at the gym, raised my resistance, and did some arm weights. (I found this necessary after I went to my doctor for my checkup, who weighed me on her special scale, and told me I had lost 2 pounds of pure muscle.)

Unfortunately, I still have not done, and cannot do, cardio kickboxing (or any other sport form of exercise besides the stationary bike). This has become a little bit of a setback...

my vision

My Keystone project is product based which means by the time I have gotten my license, written my research paper, and presented my work, I will have already created the main component of my project which is a fitness kickbox lesson plan. With this I will be able to teach an entire 60 minute class all on my own.

The scary part is, I have absolutely no idea how to make a lesson plan for a fitness class. And more frightening, I do not know all of the moves by name that I will need to incorporate into this lesson plan. So it's time to get to memorizing and YouTube watching!

What I see myself completing is this:

1. a blog on my progress and thoughts (which you happen to be viewing)
2. a research paper composed by mid April
3. an interview with a group fitness instructor (eek)
4. a way to bring my project back to my school
5. a service component that connects my Keystone project to helping others
 

so here i am

So that's how my story began. Becoming a licensed instructor of a sport at a gym is no easy feat but I wanted to do it, needed to do it to prove to myself that I could be really good at something, but how would I have the time?

Ah, but of course as Keystone topic due dates were coming around the corner and my friends were freaking out about topic ideas, I had turned in my papers, sealed the deal, I would become a licensed fitness kickbox instructor and even if I was scared to teach, at least I would be absolutely qualified to. So this was awesome, an excuse, in fact, a required assignment to do something I truly wanted to do.

excuse me?

In shock I stepped on my left foot with my right heel a fool proof trick I learned from Cinderella to make sure I wasn't dreaming. Drenched in sweat I still had the absolute desire to embrace her in a huge hug. I restrained myself.

We exchanged contact information. I informed her how young I was, I said I would be in touch, that I was extremely honored and thrilled. And she said she would love to have me teach classes at the gym. Win! win!

exciting ideas come at mundane times

So there I was leaving a Sunday class in September, relishing in my mental and physical rejuvenation, sweat beads still accumulating on my forehead. Sucking the last droplets of water out of my drained water bottle I strode to the women's gym for stretching. It was there, with my head between my legs and my hands grabbing my toes (for a good hamstring stretch) that I had my first encounter with the lady I mentioned earlier, Linda Morello.

After I un-intertwined my body, our awkward introduction began. She informed me that she was the Director of Group Exercise at the gym and had been watching me through the window at the Kickboxing class recently and wanted to know if I would consider teaching....