Rory does his thinking aloud at www.chirontraining.blogspot.com
Many thanks to Luke Heckathorn for posing and to Kamila Z. Miller for her excellent photography.
20 Ways to Train and Fight Wounded
By Loren W. Christensen
Here are some bumper stickers on preparedness:
“Confidence comes from being prepared.” John Wooden
“If you fail to plan, plan to fail.” Anonymous
“Spectacular achievement is always preceded by spectacular preparation.” Robert Schuller
As hard training martial artists we are in constant preparation for a self-defense event. We stretch, lift weights, kick, punch, and thrash around on the mats. Our ever-present thought is to be prepared for that moment with well-honed techniques, a sharp and alert mind, and a body that is strong, fast, and healthy. Our mind-set is all about the positive: strong punches, powerful kicks, and incredible speed. But what if some of that were removed by virtue of an injury? A broken elbow not only takes that arm out of the equation, but it saps the entire body of strength, speed and, for some, the will to fight.
Has a fellow student ever blocked your foot so hard that it bent your little toe way back to where it isn’t supposed to go, say, on top of your foot? Or maybe you did it yourself kicking a bag. How about your little finger? Ever had it crumpled from someone’s heavy-duty block or kick? A little toe and a little finger are tiny body parts with relatively fewer nerve endings than, say, an elbow or knee. Still, injure those little guys and you’re off to the sidelines yelping for a warm hug. You don’t even want to train anymore tonight, and you’re likely to miss a few classes.
A doctor would tell you that that is a wise decision. Give it time to heal, he would advise. Apply some ice, keep the injury elevated, pop some ibuprophen, hit the sofa, and channel surf. While this is excellent advice for your physical injury, it can be argued that it’s not so good for your mind. This is because your mind takes this advice and creates an equation. Jammed finger = sofa and TV. Tweaked knee = sofa and TV. Both injuries at the same time = sofa, TV, an adult beverage, and a phone call to mother.
The reason this mindset is arguably a bad thing is that it conditions your thinking to stop fighting, to stop training, to stop everything until you feel better. That works in training, but not on the street. The assailant isn’t going to stop thumping on you because you’re hurt. That is what he wants. That is his goal. He is going to smell blood and go nuts on you while you’re tapping the time-out signal.
Reprogram your mind
Now I’m not saying that you should ignore your injuries. That is never wise and it can come back to bite you in the bee-hind. Take care of your injuries so that they don’t become bigger ones that will haunt you years later.
What I am saying is that it’s important to train around your injuries to develop a mindset that though you have a broken wrist or a trashed knee cap, you can train and, therefore, you can fight. You might have to hop on one leg or hold your injured arm behind you, but you can, in some way, still hit.
Make a training plan
Whenever I’ve gotten injured, the first thing that passes through my mind is to ask, how do I train now? Okay, that’s not the first thing I think. First I mimic Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan when she got her knee struck with a baton by an assailant, and I cry out, “Why? Why? Why?” Then I ask myself how I can train.
As I write this it’s been about a month since I bent my left big toe back when practicing front kicks on the heavy bag. First it throbbed, then it swelled, and then it turned black. This was especially annoying because I had been making some good gains on the bag. But I swallowed my disappointment and immediately set about planning how I was going to train for the few weeks it would likely take to heal. I had just bought a set of step risers so I decided I would work on those.
Three times a week I’d step up on the riser, execute a front kick in the air, step down and then repeat.
The first week I couldn’t do a fast snapping kick with my injured foot because it hurt too much. So I just did slow kicks to emphasize the kicking muscles. Then after a few days when it felt better and I could kick faster with it, I began pushing to increase the number of reps per minute and the number of minutes per session.
My plan worked great. Over the past month I’ve progressively increased my time on the step, my stepping speed, the number of reps, and my kicking speed. While I’m not getting the experience of kicking a solid bag, I’ve improved my cardiovascular system, the muscles around my knees from the step-up action (a sort of mini squat), the larger leg muscles involved in the front kick, and I’ve entertained my dog. Sometimes I hold him while I’m stepping for added weight resistance and because he thinks it’s fun.
While I still front kick the heavy bag with my good leg and do other types of kicks on the bag with both legs that don’t impact my trashed toe, I’m coming out of this injury stronger than I was before. Once I’m able to front kick the bag again with my healed foot, it will take only a few workouts to get back into the feel of kicking something.
I’ve written before on the subject of training around an injury to come out of it stronger, so I’ll just mention it briefly in bullet form on the next page.
Oh all right! So he’s not that much resistance.
When you injure any part of your hand or arm:hold it behind your back and work your drills and sparring as usual.train more on your kicks.concentrate on increasing the strength and speed of your “good” arm.focus on building strength and power in your legs with resistance training.practice sprints to develop explosive speed.When you injure any part of your foot or leg:practice kicking and punching reps to understand how the injury affects your balance.if you can’t stand on your injured leg or foot, practice your kicks while sitting in a chair (check out Solo Training DVD published by YMAA Publication Center for chair kicking exercises). You might be able to practice kicks, even slow ones, with your injured limb.practice all your techniques - kicks, hand, elbow, whatever – while sitting and lying on the floor.if you can support your weight on your injured limb, work your drills and sparring as you usually do.double your training time with your good leg. Some fighters say they don’t want one leg better than the other. Why the heck not? If you don’t train your good leg while the injured one heals, you come out of your injury with two legs in bad shape. Train so you have a powerful kicking leg should you have to defend yourself during your recuperation period. Then when the other leg heals, work to bring it up to par with your much improved good one.emphasize arm techniques with a goal of increasing their speed, accuracy, power, and explosiveness. When you injure your back or neck.Each back and neck injury is different, so you have to experiment to see what hurts it and what might cause further injury. Whatever you can do, work that. I’ve had back injuries that were so severe that all I could do were a few dumbbell curls with one arm while lying on the floor in a strange-looking posture. By the time I recovered from the back injury and could train again that one arm was pretty darn strong.
I could go on listing every possible injury but you get the idea. When you get hurt go ahead,