Ironing out the kinks and removing the slack.

I thought I would just write a short post this time. 

Winter is a tough time for me as I don't get in as much training time as I would like. My Saturday morning training sessions are hijacked by my obligation to take my daughter to her football (soccer) games instead.  Now, don't get me wrong, I really enjoy watching her play but I miss a key training session each week. As weeks go by I find my body tightens up and old injuries start hurting. 

Jack having a bad day.

Saturdays at the Hamilton dojo usually focus around taijutsu and bodywork stuff. It is the foundation a lot of the other things hinge around. By the end of the football season I am really noticing the reduced training. During the week during our kenjutsu class, I really felt by body fighting me. Quality sword work really suffers if your body is not aligned correctly and it physically hurt to adjust habits I was forming from working on a computer and driving the 40 minutes to and from work everyday. Certain muscles had tightened up and it took fifteen minutes or so to get everything working correctly again. By the end of that session my body had limbered up and I was feeling better but I was discouraged how one less training session a week was hampering my progress. My lovely wife opted to take our daughter to training yesterday so I could get a Saturday session in. During the training we covered chokes, vital points for striking and body throws. I could feel tendons and muscles clicking and crackling back into place as I trained and walked out the the dojo feeling much, much better. 

As I get older I appreciate more and more the need to stay mobile for good health. Stuck in a chair for long periods or stooped over a computer increase my chances of getting injured as muscles stiffen and tighten. I have known this for a while now, mobility is the key to physical health in my humble opinion but sometimes as work and family keep me busy it is easy to get lost along the way.

As I write this I am reminded of a quote from Morihei Ueshiaba, the founder of Aikido:

The purpose of training is to tighten up the slack, toughen the body, and polish the spirit.

I certainly feel like I am in need of some serious slack-tightening! It feels to me like O'sensei must have had days like mine for him to say such things. 

Train safe, everyone!

Injuries and Walking with the Tengu.

Today's post is just an update post about where things are in my training.

In my first post of the year I wrote about an ongoing injury I have been trying to train through. It was an inflamed tendon in my leg that just wasn't healing. In fact, I ended my last two training sessions off the mat with an ice pack. So I reluctantly decided to take the first term of training off. I hadn't had an extended break from TSYR training for about eight years. It was the best thing I could have done. One term is about ten weeks and in this time I stopped all martial arts training (aikido included). I am now two weeks back into my training and my body is feeling strong and resilient and more importantly...pain free!

It is an important lesson for me. I have written about working around injuries in training before but I simply couldn't work around a leg injury - everything in budo requires your legs! It is also a lesson about getting older. I am over 40 and my body reminds me now and again that it needs treating with respect. I can't rip into activity like the twenty year old Dean used to do. I was also feeling a little jaded towards my training and the 10 weeks off kick-started my enthusiasm for budo. 

During my ten weeks away from the mat, my family spent 10 days in Japan (see previous post). To be immersed in a culture that my budo practice stems from affirmed a lot of things for me. This certainly rekindled my interest in my martial studies. I also discovered a new podcast to listen to. It is called Walking with the Tengu and you can have a listen for yourself here. This podcast is about exploring classical Chinese and Japanese texts for the modern martial artist. I have found these episodes to be engaging and thought provoking. The main text that is explored is a translation of "The Tengu's Discourse on the Martial Arts" by Issai Chozanshi. I own a copy of this book so it was interesting to hear another's opinion on the concepts written within. 

Ushiwakamaru (Minamoto no Yoshitsune) training with the tengu at Mt. Kurama.

So having been to Japan earlier this year and listening to podcasts on classical texts to and from work, my enthusiasm for my training has increased once more with a more resilient, reliable body to work with. 

Training through/around injury.

So I have injured myself.

I woke up one morning to intense pain and aching in my right hip. I had trained the night before but had not noticed any problems before I went to bed. As I got up I found my right leg wasn't weight bearing without pain. I knew I had landed hard on that hip a couple of times during training and assumed I had bruised some part of my hip. After gently pressing different parts of the problem area I discovered the pain was coming from a protrusion of my femur known as the Greater Trochanter. I think I had bruised it and the area had become inflamed overnight as I lay on it. I was pretty sure I had damaged some of the soft tissue around the area as well because certain lateral movements caused me pain as well. After a quick bit of research online and talking to my wife who teaches anatomy and physiology to nursing students, it was quite probable I had tendinitis of the medial glute as well. This made sense as the same day as I had training I had a therapeutic massage appointment. The massage therapist had worked on my medial glutes as they were quite sore.

So here is what I think happened.

Last week I participated in the staff Tug o War (I'm a high school teacher). Now, due to a busy schedule with work and family I have only been getting to training once a week and teaching aikido once a week. Therefore my mobility and activity had dropped considerably over the winter months. Then to suddenly participate in some pretty serious isometric movements (Tug o War) didn't do my body any good. I had also stopped seeing my massage therapist over this winter term due to being too busy. Last year I made sure to see her at least once a month. 

This week I finally got back to my massage therapist and my body was a wreck. She did her best to iron out muscular kinks but more still needs to be done. I had that massage at 10 am of the same morning I had training. I then went to training that evening. Here is where I think my problems started. I had a fairly vigourous training session and pushed myself physically. I got home tired but not really sore. However, the massage therapist would have stretched and loosened muscles around my hips which, I believe, reduced my stability leading up to the training. In fact I believe that having a deep tissue massage PRIOR to training was my down fall. Nothing I did at training was unusual or new, other than increasing the intensity. Therefore the only thing I did differently that day was have a deep tissue massage earlier on. Also, knowing that the therapist worked on my medial glutes and that is the very tendon that is inflamed now seems to support this idea. 

Its my second day with the sore hip and it is healing quickly. It is most painful when I lie down so I slept with a pillow between my legs which reduced the tension on my hip tendons. Plenty of Deep Heat (Menthol cream) has been applied and I did take Ibuprofen yesterday to help with reducing inflammation. I am annoyed with myself for getting injured. However, it is in these moments that I find myself reflecting on my practice and what I can improve on. I will still go to tonight's training session but I will train around the injury. I know what planes of movement I can do without pain and I will stick with those. 

It goes without saying, that I will not be getting a deep tissue massage before training in the future.