Doctor, Doctor, Give Me The News

I'm going to one of those seven-day-a-week doc offices today, Sunday, because it's been four weeks since my cold and I still have sinus pressure, congestion, a cough, and low energy. I suspect sinusitis piggybacked on my cold. The continuing low energy has made it hard to do more than minimal training.

I like my regular doctor, but she doesn't have office hours on the weekend, and it's very disruptive to try to take time off from work to see her during the week.

Meanwhile, in other doctor news, my buddy The Hulk got two MRIs of his left knee and leg done AFTER his black belt test. His leg was swollen, his leg kept buckling, and he had knee pain going into the test. Turns out he had a torn meniscus in two places; a torn ACL; a bone cyst; and possibly a torn hamstring. He took his grappling test despite this damage, and was told he didn't pass because, once again, at age 60, he was relying too much on his tremendous physical strength and not enough on technique. He was in pain throughout the test. He was understandably disappointed by the results. I can't blame him, he should get a frickin' medal just for showing up and not getting submitted.

He can't get his ACL operation done now because he's the owner of a business, and given the economy, the business could go under if he weren't there interacting with and retaining clients every work day. He might get a meniscus operation since the recovery is much faster.

Here's my hat off to The Hulk for his courage and persistence. I hope he takes care of himself.

Delay of the Black Belt Candidate

I spoke with my sensei tonight, and I'm going to skip this Sunday's test and wait until May to test for black belt.

I've lost too much ground with my current illness; sensei said he wouldn't be able to sleep if he sent me to the test and I got hurt because I wasn't in condition.

The plan is:

1) Get healthy.

2) Improve my eating habits. On days when I'm training in the evening, maybe have two meal substitutes/small meals in the evening instead of a dinner soon before training, and then some protein afterwards.

3) Get back to class and train regularly.

4) Cross train by doing bag workouts, including sprint-like punching/kicking sessions. This substitutes for the interval sprinting I used to do to prepare for competition/testing, and which I can't do anymore because of plantar fasciitis (painful soles of my feet).

I would have gone if my sensei said I should, but I'm relieved I'll have more time to really prepare.

Wicked Virus, Bad Timing

I am on my 10th day being sick, and my black belt test is in less than a week.

I haven't had a virus like this in a long time. I AM getting better, but it sure is slow. Last night, I got up at midnight from bed and moved to the living room couch because my coughing was waking up my wife. I don't want her to be sleep deprived and then become sick as well.

My brother, who lives in another state, had the same thing and he said it took him two full weeks to kick it. I'm blaming him for giving me the virus over the phone.

I haven't been to a martial arts class since TWO Thursdays ago (it's Martin Luther King Day as I write this) and I haven't been doing such basic prep for the test as cardio, push-ups and sit-ups, let along grappling training, etc.

I'm going to speak to my sensei tonight about what I should do. Given how I feel at the moment, I will only be slightly disappointed if he tells me I should put off the test.

It has been difficult the past nine or 10 months to put in as much training as I'd like. My job has been relentlessly demanding; combined with my three-hour round-trip commute, finding time and energy for family and life necessities has been tough, let along martial arts. I put in a burst of extra training when I decided to try again for the black belt, but this illness has derailed that effort.

I don't know what's going to happen at the moment.

Renewed ACL Woes In The Blogosphere

Life has been very busy lately, and I haven't been keeping up with blogs (mine or others') lately. As I tell people, quoting a favorite old boss of mine, I've been busier than a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest.

Now, however, I'm on vacation. I kick back, read a few posts--and find that everybody is falling apart.

Hack Shaft, an energetic tae kwan do student, in November (on election night) got a second ACL injury. He's already gone through his operation. He's still got a great attitude, but I can't believe he's going through ACL reconstruction again.

And witty blogger Black Belt Mama is going to have, in effect, her ACL repair repaired in January. She's got a protruding sheath from the prior ACL surgery that needs fixing.

I feel for both of them--I was groaning out loud as I was getting caught up on their blogs. And it's a reminder that, while athletics and martial arts will help preserve our minds, bodies and spirits in the long run, we are running risks in the short run.

Return of the Black Belt Candidate

I've gotten my sensei's permission, so I'm returning to the black belt test on Jan. 21.

It was a bit more than two years ago that I tore my ACL in the final moments of my black belt test, and between ACL diagnosis, surgery, recovery, and work/life overload, I haven't tested since then.

Two years ago I got hurt in the final minutes of the test. I had passed everything except grappling (a bit more on why grappling is part of the test later). My sensei says he's seeking to have my organization grandfather me on all parts of the test except the grappling, but it's been so long I might have to re-test on everything. Best to prepare for the worst case, he says.

I'm off work for two weeks, and I'm going to use this time, as much as I can, to sharpen my skills and improve my endurance. I'm going this morning to the local gym chain, which I had dropped out of earlier this year, so I can run on an elliptical machine on days when I don't have martial arts class (or in the morning before the evening classes). With no work, I can make lots of classes this week as well.

I was most worried about pushups on the pre-test I took Saturday. Pushups, as I've said, are the bane of my existence; to get in the door of the test, I have to do 50. My sensei wanted me to do 75 in the pretest. I did 74 good pushups, one bad pushup, and hit the ground--good enough to pass the pretest. I need to work on my situps, however (50 in a minute at the test), I wasn't getting down far enough.

If I do have to test for everything, there's a lot I need to memorize. Some of the self defense moves have changed a bit since I took my test.

While my school started out as a Shotokan karate school, it has become more of a mixed martial arts organization (no, we don't ground and pound each other in class), but it has retained elements of karate like the black belt test. The complete test for a 52-year-old is:

Do 50 pushups in good form without dropping to the ground
Do 50 situps in a minute
Show good form on punches and kicks using punching mits, kick pads and Muay Thai pads
Show good, quick execution of (I think) 8 self-defense moves
Kickbox five opponents in two minute rounds with only a few moments between rounds
Grapple two opponents in four-minute rounds.

I'll find out early next year whether I just need to do pushups, situps and grappling, or whether I need to do everything.

Mind Over Genes

There's an article in the NY Times this morning about a company offering a test claiming to help determine what kind of athletics would best suit a child - speed/power or endurance. It has to do with a variant of a gene that makes a protein found in fast-twitch muscles.

The article is full of caveats - there is an Olympic long-jumper from Spain who has the "wrong" gene variant for his sport, for instance, and hundreds of genes are probably involved in setting the foundations for successful athletes. And there are lots of cautionary quotes in the story about narrowing down a child's options for sports.

But I'm sure the website of the testing company, atlasgene.com, will get a million hits today.

In a way, I'd be curious to know if, by taking up martial arts late in life, I "wasted" a lot of potential - or whether, by contrast, I would have always run into pretty severe limitations.

But I also think it might undermine me psychologically to find out that, say, I don't really have the right gene variants for top fast-twitch muscles. Maybe it would make me work less hard on push-ups, for instance, making it easier to say, "Oh, I'll never be able to do enough."

Courage

I am trying out a new schedule for martial arts. After a stretch where crises at work and home really ate into my time for training, I'm now going four hours a week--an hour Tuesday night, two hours Friday night, and an hour on Saturday.

Last night, I had an hour of intermediate-advance grappling (a new thing for me and my school) and an hour of sparring.

The grappling was fun; I learned a new move, the Darse (Darce? Maybe Steve knows) choke, in which you can use someone's locked arms around your neck against them from side control (I know this is gibberish to traditional martial artists, apologies).

And in sparring, I had an important lesson.

Brandon, a second-degree black belt in my school, is my nemesis. I don't mean that phrase as in he's mean or out to get me or evil or anything. I like Brandon, he's a polite young man in his 20s. He's a great athlete, V-shaped torso, all that. He's really fast, and strong, and he's really, really a challenge for me in sparring.

(A digression: Once I was writing to my friend Wendy about how Brandon was just kicking my tail in an effort to prepare me for a tournament some years back. Her response was classic: "This is great. It's so much more important to get beaten up by a 20-year-old with a V-shaped torso than by paunchy middle-aged men in a meeting at work.")

So anyway, Friday night, Brandon several times would slip my jab, move in and throw a flurry of punches. While he's not throwing as hard as he can, the punches do hurt.

My quite natural reaction was to move - walk - backwards, lean away, do anything to get away from the punches.

What my sensei pointed out to me--and to all the other people in class who had the same reaction to his flurries--that we were just opening ourselves up for even more punishment by moving backwards. We were placing ourselves at the far end of his punches, where they have the most power. We were loosening our bodies instead of tightening them. We were opening up and making ourselves more vulnerable.

You can try to do other things, like move to the side. But what he told us to do was grab the mat with our feet, stand our ground, tuck our chin down, protect our head and torso with our arms, and keep our eyes open. When he's in close, his punches won't have as much power. Our bodies and defenses will be closed and tight. And we will be able to look for an opening. A single return punch, even if it doesn't land well, will tend to stop the flurry and make him instinctually move backwards, giving the defender a chance to breathe again. Also, standing your ground can allow you to lock up the person's arms so he can't keep punching.

This is great theory, it all makes sense. What it takes to put into practice is courage.

The characters above are, according to japanese.about.com, kanji for courage.