Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 17 April, 2007

Alright, let’s quickly recap on what’s happened in the last 24 hours shall we? Number 1: Awesomeness – my brother and his wife are down from Sydney, yay! Uber, awesome, golden, all that. Wifey and I went over to Mum and Dad’s last night for dinner as a big family thing, and Tank was showing Miguel (that’s my older brother’s pseudonym for the purpose of this blog :P) the boxing station Wifey and I got him for his 21st. And so, being boys, we all started punching it and kicking it and so forth. And I gave it a few impressive kicks. So impressive that my groin muscles are now sore because I laid into it without stretching or warming up. Thankfully we’re not talking super sore, just a little tender. I should point out that by groin muscle, I’m talking about the muscles on the inner-upper-thigh. At least I think those are the groin muscles. Maybe. If I’ve gotten them wrong, then that makes this a very amusing blog. Y’know, ’cause the word “blog” isn’t amusing enough on its own, assuming that it isn’t only Australians who use the word “bog” when talking about the delicate art of taking  dump.

Hmmm, I think the quality of this journal has suddenly taken a nose dive. Let’s correct that shall we!

Okay, so stupid thing number two for the last 24 hours? I got to work today, stepped out of the car and rolled my ankle and fell over. Now, the falling over bit I don’t have a problem with, as it’s possibly very amusing that I fell over. It was also a very clever falling over, as I rolled onto my back (which covered my shirt with yellow thingies from one of the nearby trees, but they brushed off so that’s okay), and didn’t land on my artificial leg and tore a hole through my trousers, which would have been bad. Anywho, I rolled the ankle, and it hurt. I swore at it, but that did’t seem to help it get any better. It’s not too bad, but it’s a bit tender. And about 5 minutes ago I was faffing around the compactuses (if that’s a real word – I think ‘compactus’ takes care of the plural, if there is one) and turned using my ankle, and it’s sore again. Not one to learn terribly quickly, I swore at it. As you can imagine, this didn’t exactly help the situation, but it did give me an excuse to add a few more sentences of waffle to this blog.

Okay, so it’s not too serious on either account, but the bugger is that I use my right ankle like crazy when I do karate… in fact, only having one ankle, I twist and turn on it an awful lot to compensate for having only one leg. So that knocks out another week of training. Maybe next week, eh?

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

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/MySpace
Original post date: 20 February, 2007

Well, not much has happened over the past few days – I’ll admit that I haven’t done any extra training since last Tuesday 😛 Very slack of me. I did some push-ups and crunches last night in the hopes of loosening up my muscles, but apart from that I haven’t done a whole lot. I have weight training again tonight, and I’m looking forward to that. Hopefully it’ll give my arms a great workout, and I’ll be all good to go for karate on Wednesday. And hopefully Sensei R has remembered to find out about Monday night training too!

After Wifey read the last blog, she reminded me of the latest stupid thing that I did that I forgot to mentioned, so I thought I’d share it with you all as an addendum to the previous blog I posted. I while back I mentioned how I watched some karate competition stuff on the telly. Well, the next day I was all inspired, and having bought a stack of ice from the servo for the esky (it was Australia Day), I thought I would try my ice-breaking technique on the bag of ice.

Now, no surprises what happened here – I scraped a huge chunk of skin from the knuckles on my right hand, and now nearly a month later, it’s almost healed up 😛 Mind you, in looking at this, I augmented my stupidity by punch the block of ice when it was sitting on concrete. Not too smart, am I?

So yes, that’s the latest ‘Omigosh I’ve done something stupid’ episode in the life of me. From this I learnt a few things –

• Number one: don’t imitate the telly. I’m not a kid anymore, even though I may act like it sometimes 😛
• Number two: if you’re going to strike a dense object, don’t use your knuckles if they haven’t been conditioned. Because you’ll mangle them. This is silly.
• Number three: if you really feel the irrepressible need to strike a bag of ice from the servo, don’t strike it when its sitting on a concrete path. Because that’s also very silly.

So yes, there we go. I’ll probably add another blog before the end of the week, probably Thursday. Before I close off, I want to take a moment to say hi to the people adding me to their MySpace profiles and stuff, and to Renny in particular, who has been passing along some great info on other martial arts he’s trained in from the perspective of a current karateka. Good for expanding my view on things, and it helps me learn about how other styles out there work.

Bloginated Thursday, 12th February 2009 / Karate, MySpace blogs
Tag-isms: 2007 | Karate | stupid injuries

Source: Gisoku no Jutsu/MySpace
Original posting date: 15 February, 2007

Like I predicted, no training last night – was spending it wiith Wifey, watching DVDs, eating uber Chinese takeout, that kinda thing. Did another weight training session on Tuesday after work though – went really well. Fo some reason I couldn’t bench as much as last time, but that’s cool. I’m sure in enough time I’ll be able to get past that. The back of my upper arms (the bit that’s normally wobbly if you don’t work on it) feel like they’ve been stabbed with a tetanus injection, so I figure I must have done a good job working on them! I’m really enjoying the weight training so far; mind you, I’ve only had two sessions, but oh well, it’s all good 🙂

Anywho, for today’s rant I’ll touch on the many random things I’ve done to injure myself since doing karate, maybe as a warning to others to not be as clumsy as I am 🙂

• My first injury came 1 week after starting up! I’d moved out with my then-girlfriend (now wife) only a few months earlier, and being the clutz I am, fell down the last few stairs in the place we were renting, mangling my little toe. Three or four weeks later, I started up again, but in the interim I’d thrown my knee out by compensating for my mangled foot. It also didn’t help that when doing some extra training outside of normal class I worked out in the backyard, which was a combination of pavers and concrete; not a smart decision 😛 Ended up going to the physio for a few weeks, and all was better. Huzzah, and all that.
• Injury number two… hmmm, let’s call them repeat offending injuries. Early on in our colllective training, when Jyastin-kun, McAdam, Tank, Buu-Adam and I were starting out at the same time (Jyastin-kun having a few months on the rest of us), we typically went really full-on against each other. It was very funny and I think it amused (or bemused) our sensei greatly that we got so into it. Anyway, in learning the art of control (and the proper ways to block/kick/punch :P), we would habitually bash parts of our bodies quite hard. If Wifey + co and any of the girls at work are reading this, you’ll remember the swollen bruises lined along my upper arms, forearms and calf throughout this period. I also sustained some impressive bruises on my chest and upper thigh. I still think doing that was great fun, but it was probably very worrying for those watching from the sidelines… such as my other half 😛 Thankfully, I never got knocked in the goolies – one time when I was sparring wth Buu-Adam I got a clip in that general direction when his kick didn’t get as high as he thought it would, but I’ve thankfully been injury free with regards to getting a knock in the nads.
• During my second year of training (2nd year? I think it was, but I might be wrong), I had an unfortunate instance of bad circumstance – I was sparring with Jyastin-kun, and moved forward just as he was striking and didn’t properly guard my chest/abdomen (this is a recurring problem with me – I need to tighten up my guard as a general rule of thumb). I received a punch to the ribs, but since this wasn’t the first time I’d gotten knocked there (and winded in due course), I didn’t think much of it. Two weeks later, and it still hurt to breathe – went to the doctor and found out I cracked a rib. Very annoying, as I had to take it easy for 12 weeks to let it heal, which meant three months without doing any karate. I reckon I drove Wifey crazy during that period, strolling around the house doing random techniques to continuously jog my memory. I remember that Jyastin-kun blamed himself afterwards, but let’s be honest – I should have tightened up my guard. In that sense, it was a good learninig curve for me.
• Hmmm, what else? Oh yeah, Night of the 3 Falling Overs. Erm, tthat sounds stupid. But that’s okay. I say stupid things all the time. And use words in a stupid context. like Uber. Or Golden. And so on. Anywho, this was during training during winter, and I’d just finished a marathon 21 days in a row, no breaks (no, not even weekends), of work. I was mentally and physically exhausted, and it isn’t anything I’m keen to repeat again 😛 During sparring in the night following my last day in the 21-day straight, I was destined to fall over three times – first I kicked with my real leg, and threw myself forward without enough control slipped up into air and landed on my knees. Unperturbed, I continued sparring… until I kicked with my artificial leg (don’t know why I was doing that – I don’t normally use it when I spar to attack), and promptly fell backwards and landed on elbows/back. This not being embarrasing or painful enough at this point to stop me, I continued to spar, and lost my footing again, landing face-first flat on my elbows, then my knees slammed into the ground behind me, landed on my belly, and was promptly winded. It was at this point (unable to move), that I decided that I should stop for the night. Sensei agreed, and I shuffled off and waited the remaining five minutes for class to end. The lesson I learnt from that one was to always be mindful of your balance, and slow down if you’re not in enough control. I can’t emphasise this enough to others out there training!
• The last injury I can think of is to do with my leg, and I mangled it something nasty and caused the 12-month break I took from karate – I’ve already details this in my blog from 16/1/2007, so have a read if you’re interested!

Now, I personally find my random injuries amusing. For the most part, they were generated due to rampant enthusiasm for the class. I should note that I don’t know of any of us who have done such consistent damage to themselves while training, and I can confidently state that in learning from these mistakes, I’ve become a better, less injury-prone karateka as a result.

Sometimes you just have to learn the hard way 😉

Bloginated Thursday, 12th February 2009 / Karate, MySpace blogs
Tag-isms: 2007 | Karate | stupid injuries | weight training