State of My Arts

I’m at home and not in too much pain.  Everything went as expected, and now I’m on the long road to recovery.  I’ll give a more detailed rundown shortly.

Typing one-handed is a pain,

Health

Right now, my fitness is frankly lousy.  In the last month, we’ve had the Christmas/New Year’s Day holidays, which are going to add a few pounds right there.  But, of course, my shoulder has been all wonky (eliminating much of any weight lifting), and my broken toe has all but stopped me from exercising over the last 3 weeks.

Before these injuries, I was floating around 190-195 pounds, and my fat percentage (according to the scale) was around 16.5-17%.  Today I was at 201.6 and 18.5%.  Since we got this scale, I’ve never seen a percentage that high.  Yesterday it was 17.8%, so hopefully that 18.5 is an outlying data point.  In my 190-195 range, my cardio fitness is pretty good.  I don’t have nearly the strength that most of the guys in BJJ have, as most of them are regular weight lifters.

Fitness will be tough over the next few months.  I’m planning on trying to use the stationary bike nearly every day.  If my foot allows, I’ll be trying to do lunges and squats, as well as abdominal work.  But fitness and weight will really be a struggle for me until I can start using my arm again.

Fitness

My broken toe is beginning to feel better.  Or, at least, the pain is now more or less localized to the toe itself now.  When I put weight on the ball of my foot now, I don’t get much pain at the ball itself.  As I transfer weight onto the toes from the ball of the foot, I get a fair amount of pain, but the pain is at the toe.  This does make walking a lot easier, so I don’t have to put my weight entirely on the outside edge of my foot.  Tomorrow will be the 3rd week since my injury.

Health

 

Picture #4: I’m rolling my shoulders forward in this shot.  Looks more interesting in person.

Health

At my dojang, a variety of ages have been ending up in the “adult” classes.  The adult classes are nominally from age 10 and up.  The children’s classes are for the real young ‘uns.  But due to a variety of scheduling conflicts, several of the younger students (green, blue, and red belts) have been attending the adult classes, specifically ones that I teach.

I don’t feel particularly comfortable teaching children.  The adults who train in the beginner and intermediate classes are highly self-motivated — they wouldn’t be there in the first place if they didn’t want to be there.  So they train hard and are looking to learn whatever they can.  Some of the kids train like motivated adults, and they are really exciting to teach.  Many others, however, act like, well… kids.

And teaching kids (who act like kids) is a different kettle of fish.  They need to be cajoled into working hard.  They need to be entertained as well, or their focus is anywhere but on working on their movements.  If someone isn’t right in their face enouraging/cajoling/pleading/threatening, they don’t end up working hard and improving.  And it is really tough for me to watch martial arts done poorly.

For example, earlier this week, I was working one-step sparring with a mixed group of green belt adults, and green/blue/red kids.  Our one step sparrings all start the same: one person steps back into a front stance low block, then steps forward into a front stance high section punch which allows the other person to defend that attack.  The kids (who have been training for several years) had lousy stances, and were giving lousy attacks.  I had the feeling of “where do I even start” when I was working with them.  Their basics were so far below the level that I am comfortable with, that it was tough to correct them over and over, and it was tough to back off a little so they could actually work on the movements.

I’ve discussed teaching children with some of the instructors who work more closely with the children.  I try to work on some things they have mentioned, such as spending less time talking, and backing off the emphasis on precision.  A number of the kids — especially in the 5-7 age groups — aren’t developmentally ready to train precisely.  But it is tough, because that means that by the time the kids get to 8, 9, or 10, they don’t have the experience of practicing effectively.  A lot of them can do the moves correctly, but most of them just don’t do so on a regular basis.

There is a mental place that I’ve got to come to when dealing with the kids, and I’m not there yet.  I think when I’m working with them I probably need to try to correct just a single movement in a particular day, whether that is a front stance, keeping hands up when sparring, or whatever, and correct them over and over throughout the class.  Otherwise I think I’ll drive myself nuts with trying to correct every single thing in a single class.

Teaching

I had my preoperation screening today, and the surgery is still on for Monday.  They did a couple more X-Rays (bringing the total to 8 on this shoulder).

Today I talked with my friend at TKD who is an Emergency Room doc, and he noticed that the degree of separation has increased.  Good thing I’m getting it fixed.  He warned me to expect a high level of pain from the surgery.  I still haven’t forgotten my other surgery on the same shoulder, though that was (believe it or not) 19 years ago.  That surgery was because my shoulder kept partially dislocating.  We’ll see how the pain goes this time around.

Health

This has been my martial arts schedule for the last several months.

Monday: 6:15 – 7:30 Advanced TKD.  7:30-8:30 Hapkido.

Tuesday: 6:00 – 7:00 Teaching Beginner TKD.  7:30-8:30 BJJ.

Wednesday: 6:15 – 7:15 Teaching Intermediate TKD.  7:15 – 8:15 Advanced TKD.

Thursday: 7:30-8:30 no-gi BJJ.

Friday: 6:00 – 7:30 Hapkido.

Saturday: 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM Intermediate/Advanced TKD.

Training

A little over three months ago, I ended up as a substitute instructor for a Hapkido class.  There were half a dozen of us, including a new-ish student.  Considering I’m only a first dan in Hapkido, I worked on basics for about 50 minutes of the class.  In the final 10 minutes, I decided to do just a little bit of grappling, since we don’t emphasize groundwork at my primary school, and I’m the most experienced grappler of those who train regularly.

I demonstrated a basic guillotine choke, falling backwards into the choke.  Good example: Submissions 101 Guillotine Choke.  Then, in my wisdom, I decided to demonstrate a couple of variations, such as rolling it into a sweep.  And then I demonstrated a move I had been working on recently in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which is basically a forward flip fall over the opponent into a choke.  Set up the basic guillotine choke with the opponent seated in front.  From a standing position, you’re basically jumping up and over the opponent while using their body to control the descent.  You end up landing more or less on your back, breaking your fall with your feet.  The choke is then finishing while you are on your back.  It is fun when it works right – I almost got a submission out of it one night at BJJ practice.  So I thought I knew what I was doing.  Unfortunately for me, I set my partner up in a kneeling position.  When I went up and over, he had no way to fall backwards.  So I went up, and then down on my left shoulder, with his body weight adding a bit to the process.

That night, I went for an X-Ray, which disclosed a Grade 1 shoulder separation.  A separation occurs when the collarbone pulls away from the shoulder blade.  They grade separations in severity from 1 (mild, heals in a week) to grade 6 (severe, surgery recommended), though actually grades 4 and 6 are fairly rare.  The next day I went to an orthopedic guy (not a shoulder specialist) who didn’t spend much of any time with me, took a look at the X-Ray and confirmed a Grade 1 or Grade 2 separation.

I restarted my TKD training after about a week, took physical therapy, and regained some strength.  Eventually, it became obvious to me that something was pretty wrong with my shoulder.  I can push my collarbone back and forth when I’m lying on my stomach.  Pushups are extraordinarily painful.  10 weeks after injury, I went to a shoulder specialist who diagnosed it as at least a Grade 3, and more probably a Grade 5 separation.  Surgery was optional, but rest and rehab aren’t really going to help it at this point.

So, they’ll be shaving off part of my collarbone, drilling into the collarbone (which has a chance of breaking the bone while they are at it), and giving me some cadaver ligaments to tie things together.  I’ll be 6 weeks in a sling, and then I will be trying to regain range of motion from 6 weeks to 3 months.  From 3-6 months, I’ll be increasing strength.  I won’t be doing BJJ for at least 6 months, though I will continue to teach TKD while I am still in a sling.  Surgery is scheduled for Jan 19, exactly one week from today.

As if that weren’t enough, two weeks ago at TKD training, we were doing some kicking drills with partners.  Just loosening up with some basic kicks.  I was working across from a 1st dan, and, well, we worked too close.  My axe kick was going up, his was going down, and we clunked feet.  I got the worst of that, by far.  His heal came on the top of my foot, and fractured my 2nd toe.  I’ve trained through broken toes before, and that never bothered me as much as this one.  It still hurts to put weight on the ball of my foot, and the top of my foot is still sore to the touch.  So I think most of my problems have been soft tissue issues, which are definitely improving, though not enough to continue with my training regimen.

As you can imagine, my blog will be focusing on my recovery from my shoulder surgery in the coming months.

Health

I’m having the worst difficulty trying to figure out how to start this blog.  I keep starting posts and then deciding I don’t like them.

In any event, this is a martial arts blog.  Check out my short About section to get an idea of my background.  I myself subscribe to several dozen martial arts blogs, and am fascinated with the different approaches I read about.  So herein will contain my approach to training, and thoughts, triumphs, and failures as I travel along my own path.  Hope you find it interesting.

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