Deborah's Brazilian Jiu Jitsu & Arnis-Eskrima Training

 Gentlemen- this post will be lady centric, as I'll be discussing menopause. Ladies. Just. Say. No. Say no to feeling tired.  Say no to crappy sleep. Say no to mood swings.  Say no to "unexplained" and/or unwanted weight gain. Or, not. If you are entering your second half century and are experiencing all this, and "have accepted" it as part of the journey, then more power to you. This post may not apply to you.  But if you are like me, and upon turning 51, your body went askew, for about 2 years, consider these things...when you were a teenager, there was most likely an adult in the room to explain the process. Maybe it was your mother, a health class teacher, a school nurse, a trusted adult. Chances are you were given equipment, clothing, and products to navigate the onset of a period and herky-jerky growth spurts.  Adulthood life changes? The medical advice seems to stop at "well that's the way it is..." The changes in hormones are every bit as d...

Let's talk about pull-ups. I have written about them before, several years ago when I was preparing for SWAT tryouts at work. I fell short in the Obstacle Course, but you know where I succeeded that day? Pull-ups.  You know where I started when I began training for the tryout?  From. ZERO. I couldn't even do one pull-up. I'd heard and believed all the malarkey over the years. "Women have trouble with pull-ups...I can't do pull-ups..." The thing is, if you take stock in those words, they become a false reality.  That false reality then becomes a wall, but a silly wall, a weak wall. A wall made of Hollywood movie glass.  I decided I was going to do pull-ups. The wall came down, as they do in Hollywood movies; it crumbled into a million pieces that were not harmless, they required a light broom and a light sweep into a trash can.  Then came the lies. "Do lat pull-downs...do band work....do tricep work...do that weird pull-up assist machine at the gym...do (i...