Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 11 April, 2007

Well, it’s been a dry spell the last week. Not through lack of random thoughts, though in part due to a continual break from karate. I was hoping to head back Wednesday last week, but the end of my stump was taking its sweet time healing up – with the move to a new liner within the socket on my fake leg, it was getting used to the extra pressure being put on it in comparison to the previous, shonky liner, and the skin on the end of the stump bruised and tore a bit. It’s finally back to relative normality now, and I was all set to head back tonight… until a lot of faffing about organising seminars at work in which my dashing between buildings up and down hills where I work let the silicone liner slip too far and the socket started its usual attack on the skin on my stump. This is, in every conceivable, a bad thing. I’ve re-aligned the liner and the pressure’s no longer on the trouble spot, but the stump is still sensitive and the last time(s) I didn’t take notice of it, I couldn’t walk the next day 😛 Which is bad.

So, this makes it:

• 2 weeks missed due to work, and
• 3 weeks missed due to the leg

It seems like I’m doing at the moment is whinging about my leg 😛 The other weekend I caught up with Wifey’s uncle at a family gathering on her side – this is the uncle who I’ve talked to at great length about martial arts, and I’ve borrowed some of his books and other gear he’s collected over the years – and he’s in a similar position to me, where the condition of his body leaves him unable to train. It was cool talking to him about it, and it made me feel a little less stupid for getting frustrated when my body can’t keep up with what I want to do.

So, in lieu of training this week, I’ve actually got a few things to blog about – I have a response to Renato’s blog on martial arts clips on YouTube (I have a few of my own to add!), I’m keen to post some stuff I’ve found out regarding really good leg stretching for higher kicks, talk about how I’ve decided I want to teach myself how to do butterfly kicks and tornado kicks, and maybe start a series of random blogs on martial arts flicks, starting out with some classic dodginess and possibly exploring some of my fave martial arts movies from Hong Kong and Japan. This last point was largely inspired by subjecting Wifey to the uberness that is Mortal Kombat the Movie, and the fact that it should have starred Dustin Nguyen from 21 Jump Street because that would be awesome.

I’ll try and squeeze in a blog a day until the end of the week – should be fun!

Bloginated Friday, 13th February 2009 / MySpace blogs, Prosthesis or amputee stuff
Tag-isms: 2007 | silicone liner | stupid injuries | training

Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 30 March, 2007

Well, it’s been an interesting week! I’ll keep this one short and snappy tho!!

Okay, first up – no karate on Wednesday night, as the silicone liner has been a real pain lately and I tore some skin off the back of my stump on Wednesday during the day… again. This being said, I managed to get an appointment to see the guys who take care of my leg for Thursday, and we have moved to a different shaped silicone liner, and its working an absolute treat! I didn’t wear the leg on Wednesday evening and didn’t wear it on Thursday to give the stump a rest, and the muscles are waking back up, but on the whole it is soooo much better!

News number two – I had a trip to the emergency room at the hospital on Wednesday night at about 10:30pm! I finished brushing my teeth, and within a few minutes, my mouth was swelling up, the right side of my face was going numb and my mouth has this crazy stinging feeling. The docs were mystified and the inflamation went down naturally. Got home at 3:30am. Ouch, tough night, but glad nothing worse happened and that it worked out. Props to Wifey for keeping me company, and to my mum for giving u a lift to the hospital 🙂

Will post more stuff next week – I’m outtie for the weekend!

Bloginated Friday, 13th February 2009 / MySpace blogs, Prosthesis or amputee stuff
Tag-isms: 2007 | prosthesis | silicone liner | stump | stupid injuries

Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 26 March, 2007

Ack, wasn’t able to squeeze in a third blog last week – my bad. Between another busy week at work and crunching in an assignment for post grad stuff at Uni, I wasn’t able to get one done. Bummer. But I’ve made up for it by having such an awesome title for this blog. Maybe.

Anywho, it turns out that last Wednesday I managed to get an appointment and had my leg fixed. The problem was the usual one – the big-arse spring in the knee broke in half, hence the weird clicking noise. For those unawares, the knee for my fake leg (see my pics/previous blog for an image) has a big spring inside that helps make it do its usual trickery. Assumedly, after it’s given a fair bit of abuse, the thing shatters/bends/brakes, and so on, which leads to the knee not operating as well as it should (normally, this means it doesn’t swing through as smoothly as it should), and in the worst-case scenario, the knee completely seizes up and won’t move – it stays locked in place.

The last time I had the spring changed, I’d waited ages before I managed to grab some time off work to go in and have it looked at, and the result staggered even the guys who take care of these things in their daily work. I was hoping to have a pic of it uploaded by the time I wrote this up, but was having trouble finding the pic on my mobile phone – thankfully, I’ve finally located it, so I’ll upload it over the next few days. It’s a really cool pic – I placed a brand new spring alongside the mangled one. The result was very amusing. Or at least I was amused, but I’m like that 😉

Anywho, back to the story – the leg got fixed, but due to craptacular study commitments, couldn’t make karate training on Wednesday night, which makes it three weeks in a row that I haven’t trained! Very annoying. I get the feeling my karate will be uber sloppy come Wednesday… and it just emphasises even more that I have to organise the extra night’s training to continue to push myself, and it means that in the future if I have to skip a night’s class due to work or study commitments, it means I won’t be missing an entire week’s worth of training!

Even though I’ve had the time off, I’ve been working hard on my leg stretches in the evenings, and I’m almost at the point of being able to do Chinese splits (i.e. side splits, as opposed to front splits). When I had my previous style of prosthesis (my current style uses a silicone liner for my stump, which is easier on the skin; the previous style had a flexible, plastic-type inner lining and the stump used to slide in and have direct contact with the socket… methinks I’ll have to do a post, or a series of posts, on how my leg(s) have worked over the years), there was greater flexibility between the socket and my stump, and doing the Chinese splits didn’t stress my legs as much as the current leg does, and I could get myself perfectly flat on the ground whilst balancing on my heels. With the extra work I’m putting in, I think I’m beginning to reach that same level again, which is awesome.

In addition to the stretching, I had two pretty intense weight sessions last week – Tuesday night’s workout emphasised chest/upper torso, and on Thursday my father-in-law put me through what he calls his ‘Killer Arm Workout’, with “killer” signifying intensity, and not the usual slang its used for in Australia 🙂 And you know what – he was right! After the workout, even washing my hands was difficult! It was pretty funny mind you – I felt like a penguin, moving my arms from the shoulder to get them to do anything 🙂 Hence on Friday, I was a little sore, and by Saturday, wow… I must have slept with my arms folded or curled up, because the muscles around my elbow were so sore and stiff that the tendons didn’t want to stretch at all, so I had to work on them all weekend to actually be able to stretch my arms out straight! I would like to thank the packet of voltarin for adding some anti-inflammatory goodness, and the magic mud heat rub stuff Wifey and I brought back from NZ in helping me being able to get my arms better! I can now stretch my arms out straight, and it only hurts a bit 😉 Methinks a less intensive session is in order for tomorrow night 🙂

And that’s pretty much it. I’ll post something else in the lead up to training, and will finally be able to do a post-training blog later in the week. Can’t wait – I’ve missed karate!

Bloginated Friday, 13th February 2009 / MySpace blogs, Prosthesis or amputee stuff, Weights
Tag-isms: 2007 | mangled fake leg | weight training

Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 20 March, 2007

Hmmm, having another one of those amputee moments today. Was walking around the office minding my own business, when -clunk- the knee on my artificial leg seized up. And I muttered “Bugger” to myself. Because Australians are so eloquent when it comes cursing. Oh yes we are.

Anywho, you’re all probably wondering what the significance of this is? Well, it’s not too much to be worried about in the grand scheme of things probably… but explaining it might be a bit tricky, and once again I think to myself – wow, it’s be nice if I had a picture to show 😛 Actually, that’s a good idea – I did a search on the ‘net ad finally found the company that produces my current knee (which I swear by – it’s a brill piece of kit, perfectly suited for what I do), who are Seattle Systems. Now, hopefully this’ll work – I’ve plonked the image into the pics section, so let’s try and plonk this into my blog post and keep it looking nice:

Okay, anywho, inside the knee, amongst other scientificy things, is a big-arse spring that helps regulate the thing’s movement. Being a somewhat active amputee, I have a habit of putting these things through their paces, and the tell-tale ‘clunk’ is normally a sign that the spring is starting to either shatter, twist out of shape, or spontaneously combust. Okay, I lied about the spontaneously combust bit. It doesn’t do that. It would be funny if it did that though… actually, it probably wouldn’t be. In fact, it’d probably be a bit shit… and possible slightly humorous, but that’s all 🙂

Anywho, what this translates to in the grand scheme of things is that my knee has now entered into an unreliable phase. Sometimes the knee will just lock up mid-step, which leads to amusing situations (trippping up, without falling over), to situations possible determined to be bad (walking down the stairs, knee locks up, leg misses the step and you tumble onwards and downwards). It also means no karate until I get it fixed up, as its current state isn’t exactly conductive to (a) jumping, (b) running, or (c) kicking. It does, however, mean I can extend my expertise in the art of falling down. It isn’t very useful mind, but it’s always good to observe some positive wherever possible 🙂

So, it’s time to slash the lunch breaks again and head out some time this week to get it fixed. If the knee worsens, I have my spare leg available, so I don’t have to worry about missing work and wasting any sick leave. Plus it means I won’t fall behind on my workload either, which is always handy.

So, unless I post otherwise, I’ll probably have to skip karate again this week. In its place though, I’ll see if I can put in another weights session followed by some cycling to make up for it, and continue stretching in the meantime. I’ll post towards the end of the week to let everyone know what happens!

Bloginated Friday, 13th February 2009 / MySpace blogs, Prosthesis or amputee stuff
Tag-isms: 2007 | mangled fake leg | prosthesis | prosthetic knee

Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 19 March, 2007

Hi all,

Apologies for the lack of blogging of late – it’s been hugely busy at work for the past two weeks, and it’s hard squeezing in regular updates with everything else happening. Before I go into much detail, I’d like to thank Pru for her comments for my previous-ish blog (thanks Pru!!!! ^_^) and big props out to Renato for his blogs that have been posted in response to some of mine. It’s been really great reading all about his experiences in martial arts and his thoughts on some of the things I’ve brought up. I guess this is part of the whole Web 2.0/MySpace community thing all those press releases always go on about 🙂

Anywho, to be honest there hasn’t been a lot to report lately – I’ve been working in the office till later than usual the last couple of weeks, and I’ve missed the last two weeks of karate and last week’s weight session as a result. Things are back in order now though – I’ll be at weights tomorrow night and going to karate on Wednesday. I’ve had a chance to catch up with Jyastin-kun and chat about what nights he’s free, and it looks like Monday’s best with him, and I know Hamez is free then, too. Now all I have to do is work out which class we’ll actually be able to make it to in time – if the class is a good ½ hour drive away, and it starts at 6:30pm, I’m buggered, ’cause I only get home from work around 5:45-6pm each night! If memory serves there’s a class that happens at 7pm, possibly on Tuesday night thought… and Jyastin-kun can make it on Tuesday nights as well (again, as can Hamez), so if Monday’s a no-go, there’s always karate training on Tuesday and I’ll move weight training to Monday instead.

I’m aiming to do some intense leg stretching over the next two days to get my body ready and back at things for karate on Wednesday night. Wifey recently picked up a foldable exercise bike (well, it’s kinda foldable – it can squeeze a bit easier into a corner for you ‘fold’ it up, which is handy for our place, but it’s not like it folds flat 😉 ), and I’m really stoked because I can actually use it! We have one of those stepper machines, and while that was good, it was a bit tricky to use when you only have one knee! Mind you, I managed to compensate for that by using my hips/waist and stuff, and it worked well, but the exercise bike is even better.

My training cycle used to be (nightly, separated by semi-colons): stretching/crunches/light weights; stepper; weights; karate; weights (fortnightly). My new training regime once I get to do karate training twice a week will be: stretching/cycling; karate; weights; karate; weights (fortnightly). I also might throw in some use of the stepper as well.

When I note ‘stretching’, I mean doing a variety of different leg stretches to increase flexibility, and then finish off by trying to hold a really strong horse-riding stance as low as I can get it for a set period of time – before I slackened off, I had it at 6 minutes. While that might not sound like much (and really, it’s not – I’ve heard of kung fu training that requires you to hold a low stance for a comparatively long period of time as a starting point), you really feel the burn in your legs (well, in my case leg :P) by that time. My aim is to eventually be able to hold a strong stance for over ½ an hour at least. I started at 5 minutes and kept at that for a few weeks, then increased it to 6 minutes… and then kept on getting distracted and stopped doing it 😛 That kinda sums up some of my training – I wouldn’t necessarily take the time out each week to fulfil that full training regime I noted above, it tended to be more like my aim, and not necessarily what I achieved (beyond karate and weights, that is). I’m hoping to be able to get back up to that level though in the next month… as always, I’ll keep everyone posted via my blog 🙂

Well, that should do it. I think I got carried away again 😉 But that’s probably not a bad thing – y’know, given I’ve been a bit slack with posting new stuff lately. Now that I’m back in the swing of things and work’s returned to its usual amount, I’ll be aiming to do three blogs a week, or at the very least, two. I’ll aim to get another one in by Wednesday, and then another towards the end of the week to look at how karate training goes. We’ll see what the week will bring!

Bloginated Friday, 13th February 2009 / Karate, MySpace blogs
Tag-isms: 2007 | Karate | Technique | training