Ok this might be obvious, but as the title says I hate injuries. You see, I love my schedule and I really can’t stand stopping for one second. I like all my crazy hobbies and I like how much I train, I don’t want to stop. I also hate doing what the physio tells me. I am stubborn and childlike in my training and how I live my life. So why should you listen to me? Well I have been training for almost 17 years and have over 10 years of teaching experience, 9 of which are from having my own school. It’s not a bad idea to listen and do as I say and not as I do. With that here are four points to help you not be Lorenzo.
Don’t be a hero, this one is the most important and can be the hardest. You know when in the heat of the moment in sparing you imagine it’s the world championship final and you are willing to lose your arm for the win? Don’t do that. Training is not a competition, yes sometimes you need to train harder, but this takes time to gauge correctly. Don’t let yourself get injured for no reason, you want to keep training.
What Lorenzo did: After each of these points I will tell you how I didn’t do what I’m saying. so my most recent neck injury came directly from this kind of rolling, I can remember the event. I was rolling with a much bigger opponent in nogi, he likes cranking necks, after cautiously tapping a few times I decided to tough it out, this seemed like a great idea at the time, but the neck hasn’t been the same again since. Remember you are responsible for what happens to you in class, you tap when you have no clear way out, you feel pain or you don’t know what your opponent is doing and it seems to be a threat you haven’t seen. Don’t be Lorenzo.
When you do feel niggling pains don’t ignore them. If you have a niggling pain, it’s fine to keep training, but either see someone or look up something you can do about it in advance of it getting worse. If it gets worse, get help and cut down on training and work around the injury not through the pain.
Lorenzo didn’t do this, in fact he kept training like his injury didn’t exist, even though it started to affect his whole life and he was in constant pain. He didn’t get it looked at for ages and deluded himself into thinking he was going to be fine. Spoiler alert! It didn’t, he spent 3 months with bad pain, that kept him up and ruined trips to the cinema watching overly long films.
Once you do go get some help, and they give you exercises to do, you should do them. Specialists know what they are doing. They see injuries everyday, probably some worse than the injury you have. They take a look at your injury then they prescribe movements and other techniques for you to do everyday to help your recovery, and insure you don’t get injured again. It’s a good idea to listen to these people.
Guess what Lorenzo didn’t do? Yes you got it, he didn’t do the exercises. You know why? No? Neither does he. In the end he had to resort to torture devices like the one below to help relieve his neck pressure. He then got something else to strengthen it, he was lucky these two extreme ways seemed to help. Would he have recovered faster had he listened? Most probably. Will he listen in future? We all know the answer to this.
Start bulletproofing your body to avoid future serious injuries. Fix those hips, get flexible and strengthen those muscles around the joints. There are plenty of resources out there. List of things below that might help, go to that Pilates class to strengthen the hard to reach places, find a great yoga class that will correct your form and help you through, do those weights a bit (these can also cause injury so don’t overdo them).
What did Lorenzo do? He did the above! One out of four isn’t bad, his injury must have been really bad to finally grow up and look after his body at least. The rest of his life… it’s a work in progress.
THINGS TO HELP KEEP YOU IN ONE PIECE
Knees over toes guy - to fix knees and hips
Pilates is great for strengthening around joints and prehab work
Yoga can also be great, but you need to be slow and think about strengthening over stretching, the flexibility will come.
Weights, are also really good. Find a trainer or a class that works for you, make sure you work on form over adding more weight.
