Can one survive MA intact?

[Parmenion]

This is something thats been bothering me for quite sometime. Every single long-term practiconer ofMartial ar5ts is a walking dictionary of bodily complaints fo one sort or another.
The worst situation is at Judo. ALL of them have bad knees, most of which have seen at least one operation. I'm young and fit , NOW, but I look at them and I wonder if thats my future. Perhaps this is a typically young persons point of view, but it gives me the willies so to speak. I like my body. I like how it works. I've already had a few injuries, two of which took some months to heal properly. I didnt enjoy that, needless to say.
So , is there someway to prevent this, or do I merely have to choose between MA and a working body?

-Tim Leatt-Hayter
SanKyu Aikido
Yonkyu Judo
8th Kup Freestyle (TKD/Boxing)

[Steve Williams]

Originally posted by Parmenion
This is something thats been bothering me for quite sometime. Every single long-term practiconer of Martial arts is a walking dictionary of bodily complaints fo one sort or another.


That just about sums it up..........

[dirtyvicar]

I disagree that MA's destroy your body. I would suggest that perhaps people need to look at how they train if they are constantly getting injured. You have to train within your limits, and know your uke as well. I've been HURT plenty of times (popped in the nose, lots of cuts, scrapes and bruises, dropped on my head at least once), but very few INJURIES (something that lasts more than a week or so). OK, I've only been seriously training for 6 years, but I am 39 and can still walk without a cane.

If that was your destiny, it wouldn't make sense to protect yourself from an attacker. Just get it over with up front !

All of the above is IMHO, of course. I am not a judoka, nor do I play one on tv. I am not trying to be disrespectful of anyone (although I tend to invoke ire unintentionally a lot!) or any art. Just relating my own experience and opinion.

[TommyK]

Greetings,

As I posted before, I have received many more injuries in over 15 years of playing schoolyard pick-up basketball, than I have in over 15 years of Martial Art practice. I study a hard line style of Korean Karate and Self-Defense, and as long as you have learnt to take a fall and/or a hit to the body and your partners repect you, you won't be seriously hurt.

Currently I am suffering from a torn rotator cuff, partly due to MA practice , but also due to advanced years (50) and 35 years of overuse and abuse. By the way, the 15 years of hoops was followed by 15 years of MA practice, only some of those years were concurrent.

As Joe Svinth told me, if I was doing the techniques correctly and using a relaxed, coordinated body in a beter fashion I would not have had this injury. in retrospect he was right. Also, I let the injury fester, thinking it was just aches and soreness. As you get older, check out the aches and pains right away!

Regards,
TommyK

[Steve Williams]

Originally posted by Steve Williams

Originally posted by Parmenion
This is something thats been bothering me for quite sometime. Every single long-term practiconer of Martial arts is a walking dictionary of bodily complaints fo one sort or another.


That just about sums it up..........


OK this was a generalisation, but having many friends in the MA (karate, judo, kickboxing, aikido and shorinji kempo) I can say from experience that those practicing for any length of time (more than 10 years) have a large number of injuries.

The throwing arts tend to encourage joint injuries: knees, elbows, shoulders, fingers and toes.
The striking arts tend to have less severe problems: broken fingers, toes, noses, and a large number of lower back complaints (lots of kicking??).

Personally I have been training constantly for over 16 years, my injuries are the usual broken toes/ dislocated fingers and a torn meniscus/ stretched cruciate in one knee (this was not a MA injury, but is aggrivated by MA training).

The common joke is that most high grades are only held together by sticky tape :laugh:

The reason for this IMHO is that we are so "addicted" to training so that when we have a small injury we will train through it rather than letting it rest, then the small injury gets worse until it is a major problem.

[growant]

it doesn't have to be that way. Martial arts fall along a spectrum, like everything, from health damaging to health benefitting/longevity increasing. A good example of the former would be Muy Thai, the conditioning of which tends to really screw up practitioners over time (I understand). The other end of the spectrum would be the chinese internal arts of hsing i, tai chi, and especially bagua, which is well known for its health benefits and longevity benefits. If you think these arts lack martial capability, think again! There are many former hard stylists/karateka that have gone over to the side of internal arts after meeting a practitioner who knows what they're doing. Many beleive the internal arts are without equal in their fighting abilities.

[maney]

I've been studying a comprehensive martial art (meaning that it incorporates *all* of the ranges and techniques from weapons to kicking to striking to grappling), Kiyojute Ryu Kempo, for about 11 years now as well as dabbling in other arts while away from home on contracts. In all that time, the worst injuries I recieved were in Judo (one fairly serious wrist sprain and several bloody noses) and Aikido (caught a thumb in my eye) which are two of the arts I dabbled in. In my main art, the worst that has happened was a bad "gi burn" where my 12 ounce canvas gi rubbed my elbow till it bled when doing throws one day.

I see people all of the time though who are always getting hurt to some degree and they accept it as "just part of the game". I think they are wrong. I think if they are always getting hurt then it's a problem with the way they are training. They are not training properly, they are too competitive and they have no concern for their Uke. They forget that their Uke is their partner and fellow student and that they are there to help them, not to be used as a dummy for them to take their aggression out on.

fpsm

[Michael Becker]

I recall reading that Judo and Aikido have the highest levels of injuries to practioners of all the martial arts practiced in Japan.

The fact is that they are hard physical styles, ( anyone that states Aikido isnt hasnt felt a Nikkyo from a high dan grade! ), that put a great deal of stress on the body, particularly the joints.

One of the reasons that I stopped practicing Aikido was the injuries that I saw others pick up. The constant attacking of joints is inevitably going to cause some wear and tear and this will accumulate over time.

In the end, a person must ask themself if the love of their art is worth the price of the pain later in life and this includes all martial arts, ( I have met silat men with shot knees due to low stances and kung fu/wu shu men with bow legs from doing horse stance incorrectly ).

You pays your money and you makes your choice.

[Onikudaki]

Gentlemen-
I treat physical and sports injuries for a living, and have enjoyed reading the posts on this thread. IMHO, everyone here is right, to some degree.

Is it true that careful training with respectful partners and watchful instructors lessens injury risk? YES.
Is it true that you cannot eliminate the risks involved? YES.
Even if everything is done carefully, will you still have injuries? YES.

I think about it this way: everything you do is risky. Professional football (americans say soccer) players have knee and ankle injuries; Muay Thai guys(used to be one) have knee, hip and back pain; swimmers have painful shoulders; boxers(used to be one) have broken noses (i've got two), and brain injuries after years of full contact stuff(explains a few things about me). Anyone here a runner? I am. If you meet one who has not had shin splints or knee pain before after a while, let me know. I'd love to meet him/her.

On the other hand, couch potatoes and "average" people die at ENORMOUS rates from heart disease, smoking, and stroke. Computer professionals have impressive rates of tennis elbow, carpal tunnel syndrome, and neck pain. These things, to me, are the price of admission.

I don't mean to ramble here (too late), but to me, the key problems are what at least one other person already mentioned -- training through injuries or thinking that pain is 'normal', and studying with people who train hard but not safe.

Speaking as one of the people who puts everybody else back together, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE listen to your body and find a good instructor who emphasizes safety.
I have to say, though, i still miss the full contact stuff. I'm part of the problem, too. I collect sports injuries like other people collect baseball cards. But i LOVE doing MA. I rehab myself (god i love my job) and i keep going. And i suspect that is what many of those folks who are held together by sticky tape are doing.
Comments? (OK, besides saying it was too long!)

[Doug Daulton]

IMO, any martial art practiced well (which does not always mean hard) should not result in serious injury. Bumps, bruises, bloody noses and the occasional light sprain maybe ... but surgery-requiring injuries ... no.

I've been at it for almost eighteen years now ... mostly in Okinawan karatedo and Ryukyu kobudo with 2-4 year side stints in both judo and aikido. While I've taken my lumps, even an occasional knock-out in karate, the only serious injury I ever sustained in budo practice was in judo and that was entirely my own fault.

At the time, I was a big, strong guy relative to most of my dojo mates. Because of my size/strength advantage, I got used to "sitting down" or just dropping my center to block out osoto-gari (major leg wheel). As a result, I never learned the ukemi or even an appropriate counter for it. I relied on smaller people just "bouncing" off of my leg when they tried the technique on me in randori.

My teacher (an accomplished national and international competitor) had repeatedly admonished me for being a "lazy uke". However when you are young and stupid, you occasionally ignore your teacher's direction ... even when it is sound advice. Long story short, I eventually trained with someone who was not as tall, but equally as strong and had a great osoto-gari.

He threw the technique, I sunk my weight ... he swept my now free leg which heretofore had never been moved, just bounced off of. The foot and calf of my "solid" leg remained firmly planted in the mat while my thigh (and the rest of my body) tourqed over 270 degrees around my planted foot.

The result ... three audible pops which were ... a torn MCL, hairline fracture in the kneecap and a quadricep which tore loose and rolled up in my thigh like a window shade ... major reconstructive surgery ... 10 weeks in cast from my hip to my ankle and another 8 weeks of PT ... all because I was too young, stupid and arrogant to listen to my teacher's instruction.

The story has an upside ... I had a world-class surgeon and PT team (through a happy coincidence) so I now have full use of the leg and it only hinders me if I let it get out of condition. More importantly, I learned four important things ...

1. Like your parents, your teacher may seem foolish when you are young, but gets smarter as you mature.

2. Ukemi is important. So in the dojo, falling doesn't mean losing ... it means learning to survive when/if the real fight comes. When I later studied Aikido, I learned to love to fall and it opened up an entirely new outlook on my overall "combative mind" for lack of a better word.

3. Sport judo most definitely has a real-world, combative application hearkening back to it's battlefield jujutsu roots.

4. Short of a malevolent act by your training partner, the vast majority of serious budo injuries are caused by one of two things ... <blockquote>
(a) Not listening to or applying your teacher's instruction, or

(b) An inexperienced or unregimented teacher who pushes students into injury-inducing situations before they have the skills to protect themselves.
</blockquote> My case was most certainly the former and the latter is a topic for another thread.

Would that I could have learned those lessons with out the injury, but nothing worth having comes free ... particularly if you are too stubborn to take sound advice/instruction. :D

The moral of my long-winded story: Listen to and follow your teacher's instructions. If you do ... you can probably learn while avoiding serious injury.

Sorry for the length of this post ... I tried to keep it as short as possible.


PS: Just read Mr. Silvernail's post and I agree whole heartedly. We must have been writing at the same time! BTW ... do you actually have 2 noses? That I have to see. :D

[Edited by Doug Daulton on 11-11-2000 at 04:06 PM]

[Onikudaki]

Hi Doug!
Well, the fact is that my nose is so big that it qualifies under USC 435.784.6 section b subparagraph 6 as TWO noses.

Just one of those interesting anatomical anomalies.
I'm lots of fun at parties, too.

(i was trying to say it's been broken twice -- i was just being stupid enough to come back for more training)

[Steve Williams]

Just read this one, hey Doug, you beat me to the draw.
I was going to ask about the 2 noses post too :laugh:

Anyway, welcome to Jason, nice to have a professional opinion from time to time :up:

[MarkF]

I have been doing judo for about thirty-eight years now, and the only problem I have is in my ankle, from a fracture when I was thirteen.

Most people I know have some kind of repetitive motion wear and tear injuries, and some of those have the "Harry Truman" type problem; taking a walk every-day. You get older, things begin to wear.

The bad ankle didn't hinder my judo, it just had me doing certain throws a little differently. Seoinage with the off-leg thrown back instead of sinking down (or lowering my center). This is NOT seoi-otoshi, BTW, contrary to what some say.

Those with knee problems got them from exercising, a la the duck walk (no, not the one by Chuck Berry or Groucho Marx).

Others have stubby and arthritic fingers due to gripping hard, but this can be alleviated to a degree by only gripping hard when suddenly entering for your nage. But the majority of those older judoka who have problems in their fifties and upward, are caused by just that; age. While judo appears to have more injuries than any other MA, it doesn't necessarily follow that you will too.

Stock up on vitamins, and Mineral Ice, take care of injuries promptly (my ankle wasn't because my family doctor took X-rays and said it was "just" a bad sprain, and only ten days or so later, did he think I should be checked by an orthopod, and wouldn't you know it, the guy took one look and said "There it is. See? Right there in your growth center. I have to tell you, though, that your foot mmay not grow any bigger." I was thirteen!)

Well, the change in entering to kuzushi, and achieving kake may have changed, but it actually improved my overall technique for front throws.

Make the most of a "problem." Don't think with your machismo, think with your brain. And don't ever train through an injury, unless you are in the finals of the World's Championship or something.;)

Oh, Yes, and Tim. Definitely start taking a supplement called glucosamine now, preferably one with "chondroitin." Most MDs will recommend the glucosamine, but not the other. It comes by several names, the one most know it by is Schiff's "Pain Free." It stops the loss of cartiledge, and can reduce pain, but over time. Check with your local Health or Nutrition store. It is expensive, but not nearly as most prescription drugs, not to mention chronic pain later on.

Mark

[Doug Daulton]

Originally posted by MarkF
Oh, Yes, and Tim. Definitely start taking a supplement called glucosamine now, preferably one with "chondroitin." Most MDs will recommend the glucosamine, but not the other. It comes by several names, the one most know it by is Schiff's "Pain Free." It stops the loss of cartiledge, and can reduce pain, but over time. Check with your local Health or Nutrition store. It is expensive, but not nearly as most prescription drugs, not to mention chronic pain later on.

I second Mark's opinion on Glucosamine. It really helps. Though I've never felt much pain in the knee, it seems to help keep me more flexible.

[Parmenion]

Oh , wow. I didnt expect this many replies, nor the revival of this topic after it died away. cool. I'm very grateful for all the replies, because I keep hurting myself. I recently took some time off (two Judo sessions I skipped. TWO! I was nearly bouncing off the walls at home.). Hrrmm, I am thankfully fairly injury free at the mo , although my broken-many-times little toes have both been stubbed, but thats no real injury :)
Mark and Doug, thank you very much for this. It was this kind of thing I wanted to know about, as opposed to advice such as "well, get a course of anti-inflammitories, and start taking them a week before an intensive Judo camp or heavy comp, as this will save time.". Lol. I shall now march of to training a armed a cocky youngster , full of medical knowledge that will make them fear my prowess.
Well, not really. That probably the quickest way to gain more injuries as some of the older and more expierienced Judoka offer to help me 'test' my new wonder drugs :)

P.S. I need a spellchecker......

[Doug Daulton]

Tim,

Glad to help. If you can avoid injury by learning from my mistake ... then all the better.

Take care of that knee ... one day, you'll want to play touch football with your kids (maybe to show America what a great guy you are and win the popular Presidential vote :D )

[Parmenion]

Yup , I like knees.. their attached to the rest of my leg! Of course, I'm over in Aussie land so it'd be Aussie rules Football or something similar. Ohh yes, guess what, not knee related, but I coped a Jo staff in the face tonight. Lucky I was fast and moved my head (god bless that boxing training) so its a cut just above the cheekbone, not a jo staff in the eye :)
The many dangers of helping in Shodan gradings. Its all good fun though. I love randori.

[Doug Daulton]

Originally posted by Parmenion
Ohh yes, guess what, not knee related, but I coped a Jo staff in the face tonight. Lucky I was fast and moved my head (god bless that boxing training) so its a cut just above the cheekbone, not a jo staff in the eye :)

I haven't been on the receiving end of such a nick, but the delivering end. By partner and I were doing kihon and I came down with tai-atari a little heavy for our pace at the time. The jo slipped past his block and struck him on the bridge of the nose.

The result was a perfect 1/2 moon cut across his the bridge of his nose. One inch to the left or right and it would have been ugly. Needless to say we both were happy it didn't go down worse.

However we did learn that the jo can cut!