Two posts in a single day, go me 🙂

Anywho, apart from my musings on February, I also wanted to post about the joys of being an amputee and random, sporadic wounds on my stump. I went to bed on Tuesday night this week without any problems, then woke up on Wednesday morning with an absolute cracker of an infected sore on my stump. This isn’t necessarily anything unusual by itself, it’s just annoying. I think a lot of these instances are caused by infected hair follicles or in-grown hairs, both of which are apparently pretty common amongst amputees. The reason behind them as I understand it is due to the nature of the situation – the stump’s generally wrapped in a non-porous material (in my case, a sheath of silicon that acts as a membrane between my stump and the socket), you get sweaty over the course of the day (exasperated at this point in time by the Australian summer heat), and being a guy and having hairy man legs (is this too much information at this point??), something’s got to give 😛 If I get them in random spots on the leg it’s not too dramatically bad, but when I get them along the areas that support my weight around the socket (typically around the top of the socket and at the very base), it can be extremely painful. Imagine a crazy blind pimple on the ball and heel of your foot, that’s what it feels like.

Thankfully, I was able to drain most of the crap out of it first thing in the morning and went home from work early to take the leg off, keep the wound clean and rest up. I woke up yesterday morning, and my body being the surprising thing it is, healed up most of it, to the point where I didn’t need to bring my walking stick around the office yesterday, which was awesome.

The bummer about it is that I was due to train the night I got knocked with the sore, so I had to bail on the session. Considering how damn good last week’s training was (I was drenched with sweat afterwards, and it was a very rewarding and focused session), I was really looking forward to jumping around in my gi again.

Ah well, I guess there’s always next week!

I know this is still early days with the blog, but hopefully the above might prove useful to other amputees out there who get issues like this with their stumps, either as a general rule, or in exacerbating conditions, like the hot weather.

Well, might finish this one up – I’m planning on adding some blogs in the next couple of weeks to fill in the substantial gap between September 2007 and February 2009, so look out for those. It’s been a good time for training though, and (hopefully!) I’ve been improving my technique as I go. I’m planning on looking into remote blogging down the road to simplify things further, but we’ll see how I go – I’m hoping it’ll encourage more regular blogging, but I probably won’t look into the technicalities of setting it up for a couple of weeks at this stage.

Bloginated Friday, 27th February 2009 / Prosthesis or amputee stuff
Tag-isms: stump | stupid injuries

Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 8 May, 2007

All is going well with all my random injuries – my stump is looking better than it has in weeks, and my ankle is feeling great; I get a bit of a dull throbbig pain once in a while, but it’s doing really well. I’m aiming to do a weights session tonight to get me back into the routine, and will be training on Wednesday night providing I don’t do anything stupid between now and then. Hamez is taking a break from soccer for a couple of weeks, so I’ll be taking him along with me, and Tank might be able to make it, also. I’m really looking forward to it, this’ll make it ~2 months since last training.

In stretchy leg news, for some reason my muscles were sore yesterday 😛 The only thing I can think of is that Tank and I were doing some shonky backyard cricket on Sunday morning as Wifey and I headed over to Mum and Dad’s for brekkie/morning tea/eat fest. Given backyard cricket is generally as low impact as it comes, I can’t see that being an issue. Mind you, it possibly didn’t help that I kept on kicking the ball with my foot and instead of knocking it with the cricket bat, Segata Sanshiro style:

*Ahem* Anyway, the point is, shonky backyard cricket should not have resulted in my legs being sore. The only thing I can think is that maybe I stretched a bit too far on Sunday night. Regardless, I’m continuing my stretching routine, probably every second night or so, maybe a little more frequently. It’s the same routine we do in karate… kinda – I don’t spend any time stretching my left leg much, since there’s not much there to stretch 😛 I can’t remember if I went through it before, so here it is for all to consider:

• Shake the legs about a bit to get the blood flowing, then fall gently into the side splits, getting down to the point of slight discomfort and hold it. 30 seconds is supposed to be optimal, I generally lose track of time so I’m probably sitting there like a dufus for a few minutes 😛
• Shift your weight and do the straight splits, right leg in front, and get down as low as possible and hold it. Again, 30 seconds I think is optimal, but I lose track of time. Damn telly 😛 If you have two legs, feel free to reverse the position to stretch out your left leg
• Settle back into the side splits, getting lower and hold your balance on your heels, steadying yourself on your hands (or in my case, knuckles – helps condition them). I read up that the point with this is to keep your hips at an angle and nto vertical, as the former is its natural position. By this point, I can normally do the full side splits with a bit of effort
• I don’t know the name for the next stretch – I face forward wit my front (right) leg bent so you’re almost kneeling, with my other leg behind my for support. Stretches the groin and inner-thigh I think. Hold it for 30 seconds or more to avoid random injuries to your groin muscle
• Finally, return to the side splits and pop yourself down as far as you can go without causing yourself an injury. If for any reason I haven’t managed to do the side splits up until this point, I’ll generally pull it off here

After I’ve done my leg stretches like that, I’ll do 15+ leg lifts front, side then back. Once all that’s done, my leg(s) are generally feeling pretty stretchy and stuff – last night after I did all the above I went and took the wheely bins out for ccollection this morning, and on the way back to our place I started practicing random kicks. You know, crazy flash of inspiration and all that. I want to be able to do two snap kicks in a single strike – lift the leg, strike once (waist), strike two (head), return the leg to the ground. I’m working on something similar with my fake leg, not sure how it’s going to go. If I can develop it, the idea would be a series of two double-strike kicks in succession – double-strike kick with right leg, double strike with left leg. Not sure how practical it would be, but I like the challenge. Once my ankle’s better, I’ll get started on working on the tornado kick and (reverse) butterfly kick. I’m referring to the latter as a ‘reverse’ butterfly kick as I can’t launch off my left leg because, well, there’s no ankle or knee to facilitate it 🙂 I could try, but the best I could achieve as falling over. So I’ll have to see if I can develop it to jump off the right leg; granted, I’ll still fall over, but at least I’ll be able to fall over a little further along 🙂

Oh, you’ve probably noticed that the main page’s layout has been updated. I’m really happy with the result, it came out better than I expected. I’ll be updating the blog’s layout soon as well. I’m just happy that my coding wasn’t too shonky – thankfully, there’s a stack of info on the web when it comes to learning CSS.

I’ll post an update later in the week, hopefully this time with some karate training news. Can’t wait 🙂

Bloginated Tuesday, 17th February 2009 / Karate, MySpace blogs
Tag-isms: 2007 | Karate | Segata Sanshiro | stretching | stupid injuries | training | YouTube videos

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

Well, the title says it all, really. I got a very welcome call from Tank’s girlfriend Meru (pseudonyms are fun!) mid-afternoon yesterday asking if Wifey and I were interesting in joining them to see the best movie ever. Well, she didn’t use those words exactly, but I’m pretty sure that’s what she meant. Anywho, I said that sounded awesome, as I figured I’d be done with my latest post-grad paper by the evening (and even if I wasn’t, I’d be braindead by that point), so agreed, and did the happy dance.

Now, for those living under a big rock of late, the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie recently came out. The live actors and silly suits have all been replaced with some absolutely jaw-dropping CG animation, and Imagi thankfully went the way of making all the characters, even the humans, cartoony and not faux-real people, which is what George Lucas would probably do, as he ruins things. Now, the word around the place is that the movie is set following the original movie that came out in ’89 and, coincidently, was relatively close to the original graphic novels Eastman and Laird did in the early 80s. The second movie, which we will all remember fondly for featuring Vanilla Ice and the terrible (and therefore awesome) ‘Ninja Rap’, came out a few years later.  It was also a bit shit, partly because the soccer-mom patrol sanitised it something nasty – the turtles don’t fight with their weapons for the most part, instead resorting to more Power Ranger-esque silliness, complete with sound effects and what-not, to tone down the violence (incidently, the film stock, lighting and post production of the first film feel a little reminiscent of the Power Ranger/Monster-sentai clique; the second [and third] films simply reek of this even more). There was also a new April, which was funny once you stopped bein confused. Then the third movie came out, and we all pretend that never happened, as it was really bad; on the up-side, Corey Feldman returned to do Donatello’s voice, which is awesome. It was set in ancient Japan (which looked like a typical North American forrest with some cleared trees) and was riddled with cliches and no plot and shonky acting… well, shonkier acting than in previous movies. Which says a lot.

Anywho, so the new TMNT takes place after Shredder gets a kick up the bum and stuff (although, the final scene in the movie suggests this may not be the case… or it’s a little tribute to the films that ran before it). The turtles aren’t living in an abandoned subway train thingo, April has returned to her scientist-self (note to everyone – April’s not a reporter, methinks the late-80s TV series’ producers simply wanted an excuse for some G-rated cleavage) and everything is win and awesome. Pros include the utterly superb quality of the animation (and fight choreography), Leonardo isn’t a pain in the arse like he normally is, Raph is awesome and angry, Don & Mikey are funny (Donnie could have used with some Feldman love, though) and Splinter doesn’t make a funny, which is good ’cause it got tired. Oh, and he ninjas other foot clan ninjas. And the foot ninja girl has cool-looking shiny hair. And Kevin Smith does a guest voice. Since it’s the best movie ever, there are no cons or problems with it. I’ve heard some say it was a little sanitised, and I guess that’s fair enough – it had to scrape by with a PG rating to maximise the access to its core market, and I thought it managed to get away pretty well with it (kinda like The Lion, the Witch and Wardrobe did – lotsa biff, but no blood and some clever cuts took care of anything Disney Corp. would frown on), and the target demographic are kids (and incidently, those who watched it as kids ^_^), so it’s not going to get bloody and stuff.

However, this still doesn’t detract frorm its incredible awesomeness. It oozes it, awesomeness comes off it in waves of incredible uberness-enhanced goodness. I’m waffling on, but I have to get across – loved it, thought it was awesome, can’t wait for it to come out on DVD. I’m such a big kid 😛 Maybe there’ll be a sequel. That would bbe uber. Unless it sucked like the other live action TMNT movies which were wrong.

In non-best-movie-ever news, my ankle is feeling a lot better and my stump is healing up quite nicely. I’m still behaving myself and I’m not going to jump back into training this week; however, I can probably start doing some cycling and continue my stretching a bit more regularly now. You’ll also notice that the appearance of the main page is randomly changing as well – I’m in the process of trying a different layout to give the page a redesign. So bear with me for the moment while I work it out 🙂 I’ll have something solid up soonish, and hopefully it’ll look nice and stuff. Once I’ve finalised the main page’s formatting, I’ll update the blog’s visual style to mirror that.

Bloginated Tuesday, 17th February 2009 / Movies, MySpace blogs, Nerdisms
Tag-isms: 2007 | Movies | stupid injuries

Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 27 April, 2007

Just a brief update this time – the ankle/foot is slowly getting better, as is my stump. I’m hoping to continue doing the light stretching and other stuff over the coming week, but I’m not sure if I’ll be ready to jump around like a silly karate boy by next Wednesday; besides, the car is going in for an overdue service next Wednesday, so it would be a bit of a rush picking it up and stuff and still making it to karate. Tank said he saw Sensei R at a recent pub crawl he went to with Uni people (anyone see the drunken Uni students with ‘Teenage Mutant Binja Turtles’ on their tees in the CBD? That was them :P) and he asked how I was going, and then got started on Tank to get back into training again 🙂 The random kicking of the boxing bag last week’s had a good effect on Tank though – Wifey and I caught up with my side of the family last night for dinner, and it looks like he’s been working on some kicks, which is awesome 🙂

Hmmm, in other stuff, I saw a bulletin in my inbox thingo about someone heading away from MySpace land – was that you Renato? If you ever get back onto MySpace, add me back on your friends list – it was cool discussing different martial arts stuff and responding to your blogs.

And a final note – I’m going to give my site a bit of a make over, inspired by McAdam’s recent visual awesomeness. Mind you, he’s an accomplished graphic designer and does all this cool stuff that I’d have no idea how to do, so that makes sense, but I’m still going to jazz up this pocket of the world a little bit. I’ve been considering colour schemes and stuff and want to make the adjustments by hand, but my CSS is really crap, so we’ll see how it turns out 🙂 Admittedly I could simply apply a pre-made layout, but I’m keen to do it by hand – it’s fun, a challenge and helps me learn stuff. Not sure when I’ll have it done – I’ll be firing out an assignment for Uni this weekend – but it shouldn’t be too far away – only a couple of weeks I reckon. I’ve changed some of the table colours on the main page, but I’m still nutting out the code, so I’m not 100% sure on how to achieve the effect I’m aiming for… possibly because I haven’t worked that bit out yet!!

Until next week, the non-adventures of Sean-o will continue ^_^ Oh, and shouts to Miguel – I hope you’ve managed to work out how to get to my blog by now and read up on stuff. Leave a comment, it’s fun 🙂

Bloginated Tuesday, 17th February 2009 / Karate, MySpace blogs
Tag-isms: 2007 | coding | Karate | stupid injuries

Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 24 April, 2007

Well, it’s been a week since I did the sensible thing and rolled my ankle. To be honest, not a lot has happened over this period of time – I’ve been icing my foot and Wifey’s been helping me strap it each morning. The biggest problem I had was that, with the foot a bit stuffed, it put a huge amount of pressure on my stump, and by Wednesday I could feel the blood vessels on the end of my stump get pushed to their limit of how much more abuse they could take, and not surprisingly the bloods vessels burst, bruised the end of my stump and its had to scab over to heal itself up. I’ve been taking the leg off at night, using my suave and sophisticated walking stick during the day at work (though I had to head home early on Wednesday last week – ended up taking the leg off at work because it was so sore and left the office at 2pm), and have tried to get around on crutches without hurting my ankle 😉 It’s been a bit tricky, but in the good news – the ankle is all better, it’s just the outer edge of my foot that took the brunt of the fall and waiting on to heal up, and my stump is almost healed up at the end. This is definitely a good thing – it doesn’t sting when I walk now. I’m hoping to get back to karate next week if my foot’s ready (’cause I’m pretty confident my stump will be fine before the end of the week).

Not surprisingly, there hasn’t been much in terms of training happening. I started again on doing static stretching on Saturday night (splits and stuff) and keep my leg in good shape (plus it helps with my knee as well), and I’ve decided to start focusing ony mental training. In a couple of books I’ve read on karate or martial arts in general, the authors have commented on the benefits of mental training. I’ve found that by taking my leg off I can sit in the Lotus position, so I’ve decided to start concentrating on my breathing and focusing my chi. One of the books I read most recently was one of Jyastin-kun’s, and the author referred to a study where a group of athletes divided their training in varying degrees between mental/physical training, with the former involving picturing the execution of their technique mentally in a meditative manner. Apparently the group that spent 25% time on physical training and 75% time on mental “image” training outperformed those who trained 50-50 75-25 and 0-100 on mental-physical training.

In the book on Japanese fighting arts I recently read, I remember coming across something similar, this time a story of how the great Masutatsu Oyama (founder of the Kyokushin style of karate) experimented with two training regimes on two of his students – one was trained purely in the physical degree of karate, whereas the other was given less physical training but was subject to mental training also. At the conclusion of the experiment, the former was better developed physically than the latter, but when the two of them sparred, there was no comparison – the latter soundly bettered his fellow student.

It’s always difficult to differentiate fact from fiction, so that’s why I’m giving this technique a go. I’d talked in a previous blog about the difference my breathing and focusing my chi has made in the past, so since there isn’t a lot that I can do physically at the moment, I thought it would be a good time to work on this side of my training. For the moment, I’m going through my kata in my head while I focus on my breathing, and will continue the same training with going through my regular techniques in my head also. As always, I’ll post up what I find comes about from this. I know there has got to be a way to develop that incredible inner power and technique masters of the martial arts develop despite their height or size; given I’m short and of medium build, I’d say this might be that extra something that helps me become a better martial artist. I hope 🙂

Oh, before I close off – I watched the truly woeful American Ninja on Foxtel last night:

It was soooooooooo funny, I’m not sure if the lead guy actually has any martial arts training – he spent more time rolling around like a stunt man than anything else 😉 And everything blew up, it was cool. Because it was so, so bad. I love 80s action flicks – they’re so shonky! And yes, I subjected Wifey to it – she had trouble breathing when the evil French guy was showing off his army of ninjas training in fluro yellow, orange and blue ninja gis, just randomly jumping and diving and falling around this uber dodgy obstacle course. And I loved how these guys in ninja outfits come running out of the jungle in broad daylight. Because, y’know, ninjas really blend into the jungle scenery in the middle of the day. If the movie had a dodgy pash/shag scene, it would have completed the atypical 80s ninja/martial arts action flick mould. Ah well, I’m sure there’ll be more opportunities for dodgy flicks as we go – Bloodsport is on later this month, and there’s always room for a blog on Showdown in Little Tokyo 🙂

Bloginated Tuesday, 17th February 2009 / Karate, Movies, MySpace blogs, Technique
Tag-isms: 2007 | Karate | mind training | Movies | stupid injuries | Technique | training | YouTube videos