Melanie Gibson Training Tips

Food Hacks for Future Black Belt

kung-fu-skeletons
Oh man, if only I looked like that…and could do a flying side kick like that too. 

So now that I’ve lost my winter depression/hibernation weight and am not eating candy every day I can actually talk about nutrition without seeming like a total hypocrite. After my bo dan test I was really pumped to get into prime shape for my black belt test. I had given up alcohol in late March for health reasons, and I was ready to say goodbye to junk food and refined carbs after I’d had a last tearful rendezvous with a Cadbury crème egg. I can go without alcohol for a while, but I know I WILL need some chocolate or fries every once in a while or there will be a trail of death and destruction behind me. Women will weep and men will gnash their teeth…you get the picture.
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Melanie Gibson Class Diaries, Training Tips

Body of Work

Tickets-Gun-Show
Alright, alright, alriiiiiiiight

This week’s lessons seemed to be much more intense, as if I’d been gone for several weeks and then rejoined slower and out of shape. In reality I was in the dojang four consecutive days last week (including my bo dan test) plus watched a black belt test on Saturday. By the end of this week I have taken five classes, two Epsom salt baths, many alternating cold and hot showers, twelve ibuprofen, used one big soft cloth ice pack, one heating pad, polished off the last of the prescription naproxen I had been hoarding, have a big ugly strawberry mark on my forearm, and a much-needed massage is scheduled for Saturday.
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Melanie Gibson Uncategorized

Brain Freeze, Spring Thaw

jabba pie

I haven’t written a post in over a week, and I’ve only had two nights of taekwondo in the past two weeks. The taekwondo absences have been due to freak Texas winter storms and a belt test I wasn’t scheduled to attend, but I’m not sure about the writer’s block. I think this dark gloomy weather starts a snowball effect, no pun intended, of lethargy and dulling of my mind. As I said in an earlier post, we may not be covered in feet of snow down here, but our roads get extremely icy and the drivers are even worse. You don’t have much motivation to go out when it’s like this. Even when it warms up and the snow is melted the rainy, gloomy skies and crisp chill in the air aren’t very inviting.
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Melanie Gibson Class Diaries, Training Tips

How I Stay In Shape for Something as Demanding as Taekwondo When Netflix Beckons and Forty is on the Horizon

couch-potato-cat fat
Mr. Fluffy is having an “Intervention” marathon. The irony is not lost on him.

My grandfather is eighty-seven years old and swims a mile every morning. He and my grandmother have a much better quality of life than anyone else their age, and as a matter of fact, better than many people I’ve met who are half their age. I’ve been a gym rat since I was a teenager, so getting back into taekwondo wasn’t as much a shock to my system as it might be for someone else, but it still required me to re-evaluate how I care for myself so I can participate in the sport safely and at the best of my body’s capability.
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