Dialogue: Husband and Wife

Bob: slaps his stomach repeatedly and quickly
Jeanne: What's that sound?
Bob: (stops slapping) I was slapping my stomach.
Jeanne: Why are you doing that?
Bob: I saw a boxer on TV. To get him ready for matches, his trainer hits him in the stomach with a round stick.
Jeanne: Please don't get any more weird about physical fitness!
Bob: heh heh heh.

Variation

I've been doing more double-class nights--a "sick workout" one of the instructors, a 24-year-old, called it.

Monday night, a single grappling class, I did really well. Got that instructor in an arm triangle and he really had to work to get out of it. (Then he quickly tied me up in knots, but it's the first time I ever got anything good on him.) Did well against other classmates, including two who weigh 30-50 pounds more than me. One I got into a kimura. One I just got out of a bad position and survived.

Tonight: Double class, standup (kickboxing) then grappling. Two hours. Kickboxing, I did well. Grappling, I did terrible. And I was up against some of the same people.

Amazing the variation.

Tough

Two instructors in my school were talking about a guy they train with at the school's headquarters. If this guy doesn't respect your jab, he head-butts it.

Jeez.

Taking Blows

Martial arts helped me get through a difficult day.

Without going into detail, I was getting beat up at work. Decisions made several levels above me were putting me in a difficult, unhappy, frustrating position. It all weighed heavily on my mind. I do tend to brood on things.

I left work, came to my martial arts school a bit early, and went to a standup/kickboxing class, not my normal one. Even at the stage of drills, the exertion, the effort to react quickly, the effort to keep good form took my mind off my frustrating day. Then came actual sparring--and there certainly was no time to brood.

I did say to the Joshu instructing the class at one point, while we were putting on our gear, "I don't care what happens here, I can't get beat up as bad as I was at work!" And yeah, at one point a speedy 20-year-old sempai did clock me a bit with a good hook. But in the grand scheme of things it only hurt briefly, and I fought well overall.

At the end of class, the Joshu was reviewing front kicks we had worked on, and he talked about how well I throw the front-leg push kick, how I use it like a jab. I don't get that kind of praise every day; and coming at the end of day like this one, I felt really grateful to hear a good word about myself.

Here's hoping everybody has smooth and un-frustrating days; but when you don't, it's good to have an art to fall back on that can take your mind off your troubles, and give you rewards in terms of health, camaraderie and the satisfaction of occasionally mastering difficult skills.

Philosophy and (A) Martial Art

People sometimes say that I seem like the last person they would expect to be interested in boxing or contact martial arts. The implication is that I'm a thoughtful person, why would I be interested in such violent, thoughtless pursuits?

Here's an interesting answer from an instructor of philosophy and boxing, in an opinion piece he wrote in the NY Times. He says in part:

In much of Eastern philosophy, in contrast, the search for wisdom is more holistic [than in the West]. The body is considered inseparable from the mind, and is regarded as a vehicle, rather than an impediment, to enlightenment. The unmindful attitude towards the body so prevalent in the West blinkers us to profound truths that the skin, muscles and breath can deliver like a punch.

While different physical practices may open us to different truths, there is a lot of wisdom to be gained in the ring. Socrates, of course, maintained that the unexamined life was not worth living, that self-knowledge is of supreme importance. One thing is certain: boxing can compel a person to take a quick self-inventory and gut check about what he or she is willing to endure and risk. As Joyce Carol Oates observes in her minor classic, “On Boxing”:

Boxers are there to establish an absolute experience, a public accounting of the outermost limits of their beings; they will know, as few of us can know of ourselves, what physical and psychic power they possess — of how much, or how little, they are capable.

In a different essay, this author, Gordon Marino, writes:

The capacity to tolerate fear is essential to leading a moral life, but it is hard to learn how to keep your moral compass under pressure when you are cosseted from every fear. Boxing gives people practice in being afraid.

I think part of the appeal of a contact martial art is facing up to your fear; learning, as Oates says, something about your limits. I'll likely never know the kind of outermost limit that competitive boxers and martial artists know--but I sure felt a lot of fear before my one tournament; there I learned that I can take a really powerful kick to the gut and keep fighting. And in its own way, I felt fear testing for my black belt--that's where I got my ACL torn, after all.

Even sparring against a young, wicked-fast black belt in class can present fear that needs to be conquered, even if that person has good control and you know it.

I'm happy that a philosopher is backing an interest in contact martial arts.

Maybe it was the big cookie I ate at lunch;

maybe it was the class I missed last week; maybe it's sunspots; but whatever the reason, I just had the worst night I've had in grappling in months. Ugh.

To Repair ACLs--Or Not?

Wow--Michele of Just A Thought posted on a really confounding study, cited by the New York Times earlier in August, that found people who just went through rehab after tearing their ACL had just about the same outcomes in terms of pain and function of their knees as people who, like Michele, me and lots of others, went through ACL reconstruction surgery.

My first reactions were 1) that can't be true, and 2) I went through all that pain for nothing?

I don't know what I think at this point. I do know that I was repeatedly collapsing on the floor in martial arts class due to the instability of my knee--and it's highly likely that those collapses contributed to the meniscus tear that also got repaired during my ACL surgery. Perhaps immediate physical therapy would have strengthened my leg enough I wouldn't have had those collapses.

There's no question that a leg with ACL reconstruction is more stable, it seems. The question is just how important that stability is.

Part of the back and forth about ACL surgery in the article was:

“Most subjects can do in-line activities” like running or biking “without an A.C.L.” He [an ACL surgeon] adds, “On the other hand, we believe that A.C.L.-deficient subjects that do return” to sports involving cutting, pivoting or planting the leg “can consequently injure the meniscus” or other cartilage in the knee and would benefit from a replacement A.C.L.

The authors of the study are less sure. “On the basis of our study results, we’d tell patients” that “there is no apparent downside of starting a good rehab program and waiting with the surgery decision to see if it is needed or not,” the authors wrote to me.

Well, I've done ACL surgery, and I feel it allows me to pivot, balance on one leg, and absorb blows better than I would have been able to do. But there clearly are some downsides to ACL surgery, including intense pain and a long recovery period. As Black Belt Mama's horrific experience shows, not all ACL surgeries work out--she just had to have new surgery to repair damage from unsuccessful ACL surgery.

And frankly, it's a little creepy to me that my left leg has never quite grown back in size to match the right leg--it's not that I look like I had polio or anything, but if you look closely you can usually see the difference.

There's one black belt in our school who had a torn ACL years ago and who never got it repaired. She's a terrific black belt, and has all her functionality in sparring (she's a "little thang," maybe 5'3" or so, but she can kick me in the head!). She does wear a brace when she spars. She doesn't grapple, where I assume the brace would get in the way.

I'm not going to regret getting ACL surgery and having a more stable knee. But I think I will advise my friends who have injured ACLs and who haven't gotten surgery yet to consider physical rehab before they decide on getting the surgery.

Many thanks to Michele for pointing this article out.