State of My Arts

This weekend is another one of our parent school’s Hapkido seminars.  It’d be easier if it weren’t 3,000 miles away, though.  So we’re flying out of Philly tomorrow at 6 AM, which means getting up at 3 AM.  Then, due to a quirk of plane ticket economics, we’re connecting in San Francisco before we fly out to Portland.  We were last out there the end of Novemeber last year.  It’ll be a very long day, though I should have a couple of hours of down time before the evening session starts.  Two more sessions on Saturday, then we’re flying back on Sunday.

And on Tuesday, my wife and I are closing on a new house.  It is close to our current house, and consequently close to the dojang.  Much nicer and roomier, and just fits us much better than the current house.  We’re looking forward to moving in.  And I’m using the whole packing/organizing thing as an excuse for why I haven’t posted recently.

My back is in much better shape after numerous chiropractor visits, and I’ve been training regularly.  This week I’ve been fighting a cold, so not as much training.  BJJ is the first thing that falls off my schedule when I’m feeling a bit under the weather.  At the dojang, there have been a couple of promotion exams recently, including a junior black belt promotion.  I ran a plyometric-type of class last Saturday, and I felt that for days.

My weight ballooned a bit over the last couple of months, but it is back down to around 200 now, though I still want to drop that a bit further.  I’ve added a 15 minute workout in the early morning during the week: 5 minutes on the bike at a fairly heavy resistance level, followed by 10 minutes of lifting, ab work, stretching, or whatever else I feel I need that day.  That’s been working fairly well for me.

So, that’s my recent martial arts life in a nutshell.  Moving and such will keep me fairly busy over the next couple of weeks, but hopefully I’ll sneak in a couple of posts between now and then.

BJJ, Hapkido, Health, TKD, Training

Last night’s BJJ class was a lot of sparring drills.  Normally we drill a chain of moves for a while and then spar from the knees the rest of the night.

Last night had a takedown drill: you “win” if you can lift your opponent’s leg or if you get double underhooks.  After that we did a guard pass/sweep drill.  Win, you stay in.  I was trying to pass a purple belt’s guard, thought I just about had it, then he swept me.  I must have landed funny, because it hurt immediately.  I tried stretching for a little bit, then went back in (trying to pass a black belt), and of course got swept.  I was done for the night.

I figured I wouldn’t be able to make it in to work today, so I slept in a bit.  I picked a local chiropractor almost by random, as the last chiropractor I went to is around 25 minutes away.  At the appointment this morning we naturally discussed how I came to be injured.  So I told him about BJJ.  And he says, “Oh, I’m friends with a guy who trains there.  Do you know ____?”

My response?  “He’s the !&*@# who did this to me!”  Okay, I didn’t speak in punctuation, and I didn’t even say any naughty words.  The sweep was clean, and I’m still befuddled as to how exactly it caused my back to do this.  But I’m still kind of boggling at the coincidence, as I don’t live in a particularly small town.

I’m doing much better tonight than last night, though transitioning from standing to sitting and vice versa is kind of tough, and doing something like tying shoes is almost beyond my capabilities.  Of course, I still went in to teach TKD tonight.

BJJ, Health

I’ve exchanged half a dozen emails with a young man who found my blog whilst searching for information on separated shoulders.  His shoulder looks much like mine used to.  His may not have been quite as bad as mine, but bad enough that he had surgery today.

Good luck with recovery, Matt!

Health

Last year at this time I was feeling miserable from the effects of the anesthesia.  Here is a recap of my first few days post-surgery.

At this point, I don’t normally notice my shoulder any more.  I do what I need to do without issue.  I do tend to have my shoulder and neck muscles locked up a bit on that side, but other than that, things are good.  I’m still careful with it when doing BJJ, because some of that stuff can do bad things to healthy shoulders.  I’m comfortable with doing everything in TKD and almost everything in Hapkido.  I haven’t done Kali in a while, but that’s more due to lack of interest (and time) than it is due to my shoulder.

Strength in that arm is good, but it definitely isn’t as stable as my right arm.  It is hard for me to tell how much of that is due to the fact that it is my non-dominant arm, how much is from my 20-years removed surgery, and how much is due to this surgery.  I’ve been playing with my new kettlebell a bit, and I have a tough time stabilizing it when trying to do kettlebell windmills.  I think that means it is a good exercise for me to do.

Wife-of-State was able to feel one of the surgical screws in my collarbone through my skin at one point recently, which is a bit freaky.  I’ll try to have a picture up for you at some point, but we’re going full-bore on getting our house ready for sale so that I don’t have much time.  In fact, it will be cutting into training time.  But, hey, moving things around is good exercise, too.

Health

Well, the cold I mentioned the last time was a bit more serious.  I finally went to a doctor the day before Thanksgiving, and her diagnosis is that it started as a viral infection, then I got a secondary bacterial ear infection and another bronchial infection as well.  I got put on three prescriptions and am now feeling a lot better, but not back to normal yet.  When I take a deep breath, I start coughing.  Ears are still a bit clogged as well.

It turns out my health problems could be worse.  My Hapkido instructor was out sick with pneumonia, and his symptoms started the same way mine did.  And the guy I was working with at BJJ on Monday had basically the same thing as well, though he went through two separate courses of antibiotics (one of which was the same I took).  So I guess this sort of thing is going around this area.

But, not being one to allow such minor complaints stop me, I started working out again on Monday.  I went to BJJ class, which was a normally-structured class: warmup, techniques, then sparring.  One of the techniques was a half guard sweep, which I should really remember because my half guard is atrocious.  Tuesday I had a family thing to go to, so I did the P90x Chest & Back workout instead of teaching TKD and going to BJJ.  The P90x knocked me down for the count.  I had to pause it twice to catch my breath (and push the nausea down a bit), and even then I couldn’t do nearly as many reps as I normally do.

Tonight was the class trifecta: Hapkido class followed by teaching the TKD intermediates (greens and blues) followed by the red and black belt class.  The Hapkido class wasn’t too physically taxing.  But then I kept the intermediate class pretty high energy since we had two visiting teenage 2nd dans who just moved into the area and are looking for a new school.  Hopefully they had fun.  Anyway, I joined in with most things and gave myself a pretty good workout there.  Then the next class took most of the energy I had left.

Being out sick for several weeks allowed my inner glutton to surface.  My caloric intake remained about the same (until Thanksgiving), but without exercising I put on some weight.  My BJJ partner thought I felt more like 225 than my current 200.  And tonight I told one of the black belts that I put on 6 or 7 pounds in the last few weeks, and she said “Oh, is that all?”.  I’m taking that to mean that I look like I put on more like 15.  Okay, she didn’t really mean it that way, but it makes a better story that way.

Regardless, I need to lose some weight, so I’m trying to eat less without necessarily counting calories.  Trying to get from the 201 I weighed at today down to 194 by Christmas.  Then I’ll screw it up by gorging on cookies, but at least I’ll have gotten down to a better weight before I do.

BJJ, Hapkido, Health, TKD, Teaching

Today is 1 day short of 7 months since surgery.  I saw the doctor 2 weeks back (and failed to blog about it, I know) and he has cleared me for all physical activity.  Yeah!

Of course, that doesn’t really mean that I’m completely healed.  The skin around the incision still doesn’t feel normal; there’s a bit of decreased sensitivity there.  Strength is good, due to the weightlifting I’ve been doing.  Flexibility is pretty good — actually, it might even be too good.  The doctor thought that my ligaments are probably a bit more lax than most people’s, which could explain when I get so many soft tissue injuries.

There still is pain, and the doctor said that it will take until a year after the surgery before that fades nearly as much as it is going to.  I’ve been backing of of Kali practice, since that aggravates my shoulder more than anything.  I’m cleared to return to BJJ, but I’m going to hold off on that for another month and a half, at least, until I have my 3rd dan TKD test.

This past Saturday I was doing flip falls and dive rolls without incident, so I’m good to go with falling (I’ll give front falls a pass for a while longer, though).  Some of the muscles around the shoulder are kind of spasming with all the overwork I’ve been giving it, but all in all it isn’t too bad.  Kind of a tepid endorsement, I know, but major injuries are slow to heal.

Health

So, this is a funny thing.  One of the red belts in the school (in fact the one whose story I’ve mentioned before), had been having problems with a swollen knee — he wasn’t sure exactly what triggered it, but it was swollen up a lot.  He rested it for awhile, but it wasn’t getting much better.

Then, a couple weeks ago, he and I were sparring.  He did a nice turning back kick with the swollen knee leg that I was late in recognizing.  I just checked the kick by raising a leg, which meant that he kicked my shin gear.  It was a bit of a “thud” which didn’t hurt me at all.  He ended up turning his ankle slightly, but was able to keep going after a short time.

Well, when I saw him the following week, he pointed at his knee, and the swelling was completely gone!  It turned out that somehow the shock of that contact caused something or other to dislodge, and allowed the fluid to drain.  Or at least that’s the operating assumption.  The swelling had decreased later that same day, and was basically gone by the next day.

The only other time I’ve known about an injury that ended up healing something came early on when I started BJJ.  I was rolling with a similarly inexperienced white belt in a no-gi class.  I got caught in an inverted arm bar, and (stupidly) figured I would be able to slip out of it.  So I fought it and he ramped up the pressure.  Then we both heard something that sounded like paper ripping.

I had a little bit of pain, but really not like I was expecting.  After a couple of days, that pain went away.  It turned out that the ripping sound was some scar tissue.  I had had shoulder surgery for a subluxing shoulder (kept popping halfway out and then going back in) as a teenager, and for the following 17 years or so I had limited range of motion in that shoulder.  Put your elbow by your side with your fist in front of you (elbow bent at 90 degrees) and try to move your fist around your body without moving your elbow.  Normal shoulders can go roughly 90 degrees, but my shoulder could only go around 30 degrees.  After that arm bar, my range of motion improved significantly — now I can rotate that shoulder maybe 80 degrees or so.

Anyone else get an injury that ended up being beneficial?

Health

My shoulder surgery was Jan 19, which was exactly six months ago today.  It actually seems like longer ago than that to me.  All in all, I think my shoulder is doing very well.  I’ve been lifting weights and making good gains in strength.  I can do pushups now without having my shoulder feel like it might come apart.  I also don’t need to limit any of my activities, other than Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, for fear of reinjury.  My next appointment is in a couple of weeks, and he’ll probably clear me for that as well.  We’ll see.

That being said, I just took another picture tonight, and… well.  The shoulder itself doesn’t look much different than it did before surgery, which is slightly disturbing.  Despite that, the collar bone is actually connected to my shoulder, which it wasn’t prior to surgery.

And without further ado, here are the shots:

Before Surgery:

12 days after Surgery:

6 months after Surgery:

Seriously.  You wouldn’t think to look at it that it is any better than it was before.  But it is, and that’s all that really matters.

Health

Today was my latest appointment with the doctor.  Two X-Ray’s and an exam, and I’m in perfectly good shape!  Apparently the soreness and stiffness is still to be expected.  The collarbone is still in the place it is supposed to be, and he was pleased with that.

I’m cleared for lifting weights, so I’ll try to phase that back in a bit.  I still have my chinup bar hanging from a doorframe, which I had stopped when I was getting a little bit sore.  I’ll phase some pushups back in as well.  I might go back to Physical Therapy once or twice more, but I think at this point I don’t really think that it will be helpful enough that I’ll continue to devote time to going there.

I’m still not allowed to get back into grappling, nor do I wish to stress it in that sort of way.  I’m going to have to be comfortable rolling over that shoulder in order to start grappling back up again.  And I’m still kind of babying it when I fall in Hapkido.

Here’s hoping it continues to improve.

Health

I haven’t written a shoulder update in a while (in fact, I haven’t written much in a while).

Over the last week, my shoulder has begun hurting a more.  I backed off of Physical Therapy and some of the other strengthening exercises I was doing.  The AC joint itself is sore to the touch, in addition to the upper trapezius and other back muscles being locked up tight.  The doctor had said that the surgery is designed to be overly tight at first, and is expected to loosen up.  I’m starting to wonder if it has loosened up more than it was supposed to.

Of course, I haven’t really backed off of other things, such as tennis and sparring, and I’ve been doing some light falling in Hapkido.  I haven’t specifically reinjured it in any way since Day 5, when I thought I may have tweaked it.  But it still has some instability in some directions, which troubles me slightly.  Fortunately, I don’t have to wonder much longer.  I have my next appointment with my doctor tomorrow.  Hopefully everything is fine, and I’m worrying about nothing of import.

Health