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...