Most memorable injury and how you overcaim

**Permalost** · Posted On: 8/27/2012 11:58am

My martial arts career has been remarkably injury free, considering I've trained for over a decade and have been beaten up in most forms of competition. In sanshou I was kicked in the jaw and woke up with everyone standing in a circle around me, and a different time having someone land on me with a sacrifice throw and compressing my ribcage. It hurt to laugh or move or breathe hard for a while, but I never went to the doctor because I was a teenager and screw that. I just became more somber for a while.

During my 2nd Dog Brothers gathering, I got kicked in the mask hard enough to cave it in and the mesh cut my nose open. At the end of the fight, we took masks off, and Crafty Dog, the moderator of the event, gave me a look that kinda scared me. It wasn't actually that bad, but by that time it had been bleeding into sweat for a fight so my face was pretty bloody. Still have a scar on my face from that.

My most memorable non-martial arts injury was having a coyote chew up my foot out in the desert as a kid. We had been seeing coyotes all weekend, and they would walk right by us like domestic dogs, and I could even tell the difference between them, by their eye color etc. It was some Beastmaster ****. One walked right up to me and stared at me, and I realized that I hadn't seen this one before, and as soon as I realized that, it had grabbed my left foot and started violently whipping side to side, causing the tooth punctures to turn into cuts. I started kicking it with my free leg, but with all my power, it didn't even blink on impact, and that scared the hell out of me. Eventually it ran off and I went to the hospital. Had to get a rabies vaccination, but I still have the scars so that's kinda cool.

**dmyhra** · Posted On: 8/27/2012 12:07pm

In May of 2011 I got slammed with an O Soto Gari, hit me like a mack truck, broke a vertebrae in my neck.
And last week a new student collapsed on my knee while attempting an Ura Nage, luckily it didn't break, still hurt like a son of a bitch though.

**Smackjack** · Posted On: 8/27/2012 12:26pm

Today I wrapped a 30lbs Bungee exercise band around my splint(mid-forearm) while holding on to the bungee band with my other hand and did biceps, triceps, and shoulders to avoid losing muscle mass for rehabilitation. The only thing I'll will be unable to do is forearms. Im waiting for my follow up on my broken nose to see when I can slow/light roll.

**OZZ** · Posted On: 8/28/2012 1:10pm

I've been pretty fortunate as far as injuries go too..I've had more serious injuries in street fights and motorcycle accidents than in either hockey or MA-related incidents.

Plenty of cracked/fractured fingers over the years. A couple of mild concussions.
Tore some cartilage along my rib cage when rolling with a fellow coach when I was coaching HS wrestling. That hurt like a bitch too..kept me off the mat for a while.
I was very fortunate in boxing, never got KO'd or even knocked down, but I did get hit hard enough to see stars and got a couple of standing 8's in my day.
I've sprained my ankle playing hockey , also got a couple of hairline fractures over the years, a few stitches.
Fractured my orbital bone in a brawl, that took a while to heal. For a good month or two afterwards every time I would grind my teeth or chew an overcooked piece of meat or something I could hear tiny little crackling noises.
But this is all minor ****..
The big problem for me has been, and continues to be, my left leg.
I busted the tib and fib in a motorcycle accident, also twisted that ankle pretty badly in hockey.
I healed up Ok from the serious fracture, and got my flexibility and strength back. But the more serious damage occurred when I had a blood clot a few years later. My leg was swollen and almost turning green it was so oversized, I had been to see the doctor, only to have him tell me it was just a consequence of my ' bad leg' and the steel rod I now have. Who was I to argue ?
Turns out this doctor was a negligent ****, and he almost cost me my goddamn life because less than a month later I was in the hospital with a pulomonary embollism. The clot had found its way into my lung.
As a result of walking around with a ridiculously swollen leg for a couple of months, a shitload of blood vessels in my calf broke so now I have a weird discoloration down around my ankle. When the weather gets hot , or I do a lot of heavy lifting or exercising in the summer time, the area flares up and gets red and itchy. The area right around the spot where the screws from the rod are is the worst. It caused me some grief in my CMA training because holding a horse stance for long periods of time is difficult, it feels like the lower portion of the rod is going to poke through my leg sometimes if I hold it too low/long. But nobody wants to come off like whiner..
But the thing that seems to put the worst strain on it now is when I'm outside doing landscaping work around my property in the summer months, or moving furniture in and out of places - which I do a lot of for our side-business. The extreme heart exacerbates the problem and I start limping after doing a lot of hauling wood or wheelbarrows full of dirt etc. In the fall, its not bad..but during July and August it can get painful to the point where I can only put a couple of hours in at a time.
If I do barbell curls standing up at the gym, sometimes its sufficient pressure to cause me to limp a bit afterwards.
The joint at the knee also tightens up a lot, and I have had to go to physio a few times over the years to get the flexibility going again. If I don't do my exercises regularly, it will seize up on me and bending it gets troublesome.
Like a lot of guys, I have an ego and don't like to use the leg as an excuse ..but as I get older I have a feeling it is going to get worse before it gets better. I've already been told by the doctors that as I age it will likely become a hindrance and will probably end up using a cane when I'm an old geezer.
All I can do is keep active and hope for the best. In hindsight, I wish I never had the damn rod put in, I think it would have been better to just let it heal in a cast.
My advice to anyone faced with a choice between a rod or a cast is to say no to having a foreign object placed in your body. Its not natural, and studies have shown that the chances of getting blood clots after this kind of surgery are increased dramatically.

**xrisomilia** · Posted On: 8/28/2012 1:41pm

My most serious injury so far was while was practicing WIng Tsun. My retarded partner that day accidentally kicked me on my back and stayed off action for about 3 weeks. Other than that the classic bruises and scratches.

**crappler** · Posted On: 8/29/2012 10:59am

I remember the separated rib cage injury too from wrestling. I just heard it go "pop" once and it hurt like a bitch for six months. Tore my Achilles almost completely while rock climbing once, pushed my foot into a trough and stood up on it indelicately. The result is weak and bulky tissue and lost of flexibility. Makes climbing mountains hard. I held onto a guard far longer than I should have by one of the original instructors of my krotty place, and it just tore something in my hip. Still not quite right.

**crappler** · Posted On: 8/29/2012 11:00am

Of course my most memorable injury is the broken nose I got from my ATA-trained wife, who while drinking and playing with Escrima sticks, decided to hurl one at my face, smashing my nose sideways.

I don't make fun of ATA anymore.

**Vorpal** · Posted On: 8/29/2012 8:38pm

Forgot about getting the cords connected to my left nut twisted somehow doing Hapkido In Korea back in the 80s. That hurt for months. Same nut got destroyed during a footchase in Newark, slipping while going over a stokade style fence.

**crappler** · Posted On: 8/29/2012 10:26pm

Originally Posted by Vorpal

Forgot about getting the cords connected to my left nut twisted somehow doing Hapkido In Korea back in the 80s. That hurt for months. Same nut got destroyed during a footchase in Newark, slipping while going over a stokade style fence.

Hey I heard your compadres in NY wounded 11 people why shooting at some wingnut. What do you think of that? I know people think I'm crazy, but I'm thinking they did pretty good.

**danno** · Posted On: 8/29/2012 10:45pm

I've had fractures, cuts, ligament tears, but nothing as interesting as one of my students about 3 months ago. Warning, it's a little gruesome (compound dislocation).

Spoiler:

No surgery required, he was back at training about 4 weeks later.

I've found a number of other people on the internet with exactly the same injury, and all of them happened to people training BJJ and wrestling.