Because I’m a very clever soul, I’ve managed to split the foot of my prosthesis:

That’s a shot showing where it’s breaking off. Generally, this is caused by too much impact work when it comes to my kicks – on the previous style of foot I had, it would typically break along the top of the fake toes, which generally wouldn’t bother me too much as I’d still be able to walk around. Given how this one’s split though, I’m inclined to lean on the side of caution as I’m keen to avoid breaking the ends off. Doing so would probably make walking around a bit awkward/dangerous with the whole falling down thing. On the other hand, it would also ensure hilarity as I randomly fell over. In my demented brain, such occasions would be accompanied by some kind of silly gag music, and possibly canned laughter. I often wonder about my sanity in reviewing the many numerous dangers that arises from the combination of my attitude and my condition 😛

Needless to say, I’m writing this blog instead of training. I feel like a bit of an idiot, but I want to be able to do the whole walking thing between now and next Thursday, which is when I go in to get it fixed, so there you go. Also, my thumb I mangled last week is still healing up and is swollen. With ice-burns because I keep insisting on putting ice on it each night to speed up the healing process. This is also a wussy complaint, but I thought I’d share anyhows 😛 It also means that I have an excuse to use one of my favourite tags, “stupid injuries” 🙂

For those interested, I’ve added a few pics to the ‘Leg Stuff’ gallery, so feel free to have a look – just various shots of the mangled foot. I still have the old College Park Tribute foot I severely mangled lying around the place – might throw some pictures up of that later on to add to the gallery.

I’m a bit behind on what’s been happening among some of the regular MA blogs I read up on at the moment, so expect some more insightful-ish blogs in due course once I’ve caught up. I find that if I have ideas floating around in my head on what I want to write about, reading other people’s blogs has a habit of giving me a kick up the arse to actually write down my thoughts!!

Bloginated Wednesday, 8th April 2009 / Prosthesis or amputee stuff
Tag-isms: prosthesis | prosthetic foot | stupid injuries

What I want to talk about today is how building my core strength through karate has helped me as an amputee.

Core strength is a term you’ll often hear dedicated martial artists talk about, but rarely one used when discussing life as an amputee. While I understood the value of the concept previously, it’s only in relatively recent years that I’ve taken the term on for what I used to think of as solely my abs, but there’s more to it than that. For those interested in a neat little definition, Wikipedia has a nice definition of what the core anatomy is (click here).

My first experience with the medical benefits of core strength built through karate was actually with my lower back – I have a family history of shonky backs, but my position is a little more accute due to the amount of abuse my lower back gets as an above-knee amputee. Where able-bodied people have the foot/ankle/knee to cushion their walking, amputees have to absorb extra pressure from walking into our lower backs. Think of it like jumping down from a few steps above the ground, and when you land on your foot, you have your legs dead straight instead of slightly bent to absorb the force from landing – that’s pretty much what we have to deal with as am amputee. Even more appropriately given the nature of a prosthesis, grab a broom, hold it vertically and slam the bare end (i.e. not the brush end :P) onto the floor – the vibrations you feel in your hand is akin to what we feel run up our stump(s) and back. There are certain variables that can alter the amount of force we receive – below-knees can absorb some extra force since they still have their knees, above-knee amputees will vary depending on the length of their stump, and there are mechanical devices (different prosthetic knees, feet and socket designs) that aim to reduce the amount of energy absorbed vertically through the stump and lower back, but for the most part, the principle remains pretty accurate.

While my prosthesis I currently have has a few technological tricks by way of the design and knee/foot equipped, remember that before I was 18 and these extra tools become available to me I was on a leg that wasn’t able to do much to soften the vertical blow dealt to my body through the simple act of walking.

So, with this in mind, its understandable that your lower back gets stressed as an amputee. Therefore you have two solutions to this – don’t walk/severely minimse your physical activity, or strengthen your body to withstand the extra abuse you deal to your body. I don’t think you can guess which path I decided to take 😉

My first experience of the medicinal benefits karate was having on my body as an amputee was when I went to the physio a number of years ago when my then-girlfriend (and now wife) had started living together – I finally went and saw someone about my back, and while my posture was generally very good, I was told that one way to improve the lower back muscles was to get into the habit of using your abs to support your back. This seemed strange to me at the time, but I was told that the muscles are complementary, and strong abs will help support your back. She encouraged me to get into the habit of tensing my abs so that I always have extra support for my back, so I decided to give it a a go. Admittedly, it didn’t help that I was also a bit vain about it and saw it as an opportunity to make my belly flatter by doing the extra exercises, but I found that it started to have positive effect on the overall strength of my lower back.

This now lends itself to how I’ve learned the importance of core strength in karate. Martial artists often talk of the importance of strengthening your core muscles, and how a strong core will lend itself to better power, technique and control. As time’s gone on, I’m a firm believer in the concept. When you punch, to extract maximum efficiency of your technique, you don’t just move your arm – you transfer the energy from the ground, up into your torso and use your core muscles to whip your shoulder, arm and fist into your target, squeeze the muscles at the last moment to gain that extra bit of dynamic power, and then use the core muscles to bring your arm back and maintain a strong center-line throughout your technique. Same for kicking – use your core to support your body and back, utilise your hips, whip the leg out, bring it back. Grappling and throwing are nothing without a strong core – without it, you’ll ruin your back. All techniques in martial arts benefit from a strong core, and the sooner you learn this, the better you’ll be for it.

So what’s the catch with this as an amputee? Well, I’ve found myself utilising my core muscles all the time to support and strengthen my body. When I get out of bed in the morning, I squeeze my abs and use these muscles and my arms to sit up to avoid placing pressure on my back. When I hop around without my leg on, my abs clench every time I hit the ground the prevent a jolt to my lower back. Every time I lift something, I contract my muscles to absorb the extra strength I need to draw from my back since I can’t use two legs (well, knees :P) to assist in lifting a weighted object. When I twist and turn my body when I’m on crutches, I use my core muscles to control my extension and insulate my back. And of course, in class I use my core extensively to improve my balance, control, power, technique and assist my back at all times, whether it be holding a stance or having take-downs or counters performed on me. In fact, I’ve found that even the motions of good form in practicing your stances does a terrific job of stretching your back, loosening the muscles and then building up their strength in supporting your weight.

So, core strength is obviously a very important part of maintaining and strong and healthy back for all people, but for amputees, there is an incredible amount of good it can do for you. At the very least, good core strength will help protect your lower back from the jarring pain you get from walking, but there is so much broader application for using your core muscles in everyday life, and everything you do physically can benefit from it.

While martial arts isn’t alone in being an activity that can radically strengthen your core, I find that the varied techniques and exercises you learn in a good system can be used to develop your core, and the different ways you learn to increase the mastery of your physical behaviour is a huge benefit not only to amputees in extracting maximum potential from their situation, but to all people.

… and now that I’ve written it and looked over it twise, I hope it made sense and wasn’t too jumbled 😛

Bloginated Friday, 3rd April 2009 / Prosthesis or amputee stuff
Tag-isms: amputation | Core strength | prosthesis | stump | stupid injuries | tips

Alright, let’s recap on this week’s two stupid injuries – mangled my right thumb training on Monday night due to poor form, and whilst changing a tire on Wednesday night straight after work (because that’s really what you want to be doing after a long, unproductive day in the carpark near your workplace :P), I gave my left thumb a good mangling when the spare I was taking out the boot bounced back into my fully-extended thumb and caused my hand to swell up like a balloon 😛

Weirdly enough, it’s Friday, and everything is pretty much healed up.

I iced the thumb on Monday night straight after the injury, woke up Tuesday and it was practically all better, and was back to normal by Wednesday. I should have iced up my left hand on Wednesday night before going to bed, but despite this, I iced it up before and after work yesterday and again before I went to work this morning, and it’s almost back to normal.

Freaky.

I normally take longer to heal up from stuff like this. Hell, even my knee’s been better of late. Not that I’m complaining or anything. Hopefully its a sign I won’t mangle myself as much in the future, or if I do, I’ll bounce back reasonably quickly. I’m like Wolverine, if he suffered from some wussy bruising on his thumbs and stuff, and was a ranga. Hahaha, Wolverine as a ranga – that’s crazy talk.

It was actually Jyastin-kun who coined the Wolverine-healing concept – one time he seriously mangled his hand at work, and he healed up miraculously fast. His doctor, with his broken English, said he was Wolverine. Y’know, because of how fast he healed. I thought that was awesome, so I thought I’d steal the phrase and apply it to me. Because Wolverine is awesome, and the new movie is looking like it might be tip-top. At least it couldn’t be worse than Spider-man 2 or a Schumacher-directed Batman movie.

So yeah, I’ll leave my rant here 😛 Might add something worthwhile to this blog shortly!!

Bloginated Friday, 3rd April 2009 / Injuries
Tag-isms: stupid injuries

In the spirit of rampant enthusiasm, after getting home from work and starting my workout tonight, I began my usual exercises on the punching bag. It’s been a while since I’d worked on my backfists, so after some kicks and punches I thought I’d give it a whirl. Two weeks ago I got a bit enthusiastic with practicing knifehand strikes on the bag and had a great amount of success, so I figured some backfists would be good practice. Looks like I got too enthusiastic, and my form was a bit sloppy, as I now have a bruised thumb from the whipping action at the end of the strike due to not completely closing/forming my fist on impact.

A year or two back I found that backfists were a great way to demonstrate the effectiveness of a whipping-motion in a hand-strike, and this was emphasised more-so by starting off with open hand and using the clenching motion of forming a fist towards the end to dramatically increase the final intensity of the strike. I got the idea from reading up on the principles behind a 1-inch punch, whereupon you use every ability of your muscles (including the expansion and contraction of the fist upon impact) to deliver the greatest amount of dynamic impact possible within such a short space. I’ve also read up since then that you can apply similar theory to many other strikes in karate, but obviously you get to this stage with time and practice. Anywho, as nice as the theory was, if in practice your form isn’t accurate (or consistent), there are obviously going to be consequences, as I found out tonight!

Ah well, another lesson learned 😛 Mind, it’s nothing serious, but I ended up stopping my workout and put an icepack on it as preventative action, then nearly gave myself a freezer burn on another part of my thumb while doing so 😛 If this is what I managed to do to myself on the punching bag, I’m afraid of what I would have done once I started handling the weights. Methinks I’m having a clumsy night.

It also doesn’t help that the enthusiasm with which I attacked the bag tonight was in part inspired by watching Rapid Fire last night (see my previous post), so I’ll try and re-focus my attention on getting my kata correct so I can show off some solid form in class this week. Speaking of class, it looks like I may be roping Jyastin-kun back into training, as he’s coming along with me this week to see what he thinks of where I’m currently doing karate. We’ll see how it goes, hopefully he gets a kick out of jumping back into karate after a couple of years off.

Well, with that all done, I’m off to watch some kata on YouTube!

Bloginated Monday, 30th March 2009 / Karate
Tag-isms: stupid injuries

So, looks like there was another good reason to hold off on training last night, as my knee started playing up again (not my fake one, the real one :P). My knee typically gives me some trouble from time to time due to the extra work it has to do in supporting my body, and I think getting up after all the breakfalls last week pushed it a little further than usual. So, I thought I’d share a secret that may be a load of hogwash, but it seems to work a charm for me.

When Wifey and I were honeymooning in New Zealand a few years back, we came across this Deep Heat kinda stuff – it’s called “Therapeutic Mud” or something like that, smells a bit like Deep Heat, but apparently uses the thermal mud from Rotorua in the mix. We picked some up while we were over there as Wifey had mangled her ankles from all the walking around we were doing (though it probably didn’t help that she was wearing boots with massive heels on them from time to time if I remember correctly ;)), and the stuff worked extremely well. So, a while back I started using the mud on sore muscles – one time after a particularly heavy weights session both my arms seized up overnight and I couldn’t bend them from the elbow. Added some mud, and in a few days they were right as rain, and in the interim it took away the immediate pain I was getting from them. I’ve also noticed it has a beneficial effect on my knee when it gets a bit achy – sometimes I’ll do it as a precaution after a heavy training session, and sometimes I do it if there’s some general aching (like last night). To be honest, I really should have used some after the breakfall training last week as a preventative act, but was feeling lazy when I got home and didn’t. Hopefully I’ll remember to do the right thing next time 😛

I’ve only ever found it in NZ, and when my folks went there in 2007 (or was it last year?), we had them bring back a couple of tubes of the stuff for us. If people are genuinely interested, I’ll take a photo of it and post some details. Like I said, it may be all in my head, but I’ve found it does wonders for me, much better than actual Deep Heat or some of the other anti-inflammatory gels I’ve used in the past.

I should also start making regular trips to the physio to try and keep the knee in good order – I remember when I first started having knee troubles back in 2004 after I fell down the stairs in our townhouse that the improvement was huge after I saw a physio who used a combination of acupuncture and ultrasound (I think it was ultra sound, my memory’s hazy :P) on my knee. Ah well, I’m sure one day I’ll get off my behind and start 🙂

Bloginated Thursday, 19th March 2009 / Injuries
Tag-isms: knee | stupid injuries