An Eventual Injury

 It was bound to happen, and I can only assume it will happen many more times in the future, no matter how careful I am.  I injured myself training, and had to take a few weeks off.  You're probably wondering what the big deal is, or why I would even mention it, as it's just a part of the process, and nothing to be concerned about, and I get that.  Hear me out, though...

      Thanksgiving was about to hit, and I was pretty scared.  Despite all the warnings and everyone else being just as scared as I was, there were a LOT of people visiting relatives for the holiday.  Not just getting in their cars for a few hours down the highway, but loading up their entire immediate family into a crowded airport, then onto a crowded airplane, and then into yet another crowded airport.  Then into a cab that picks up travelers from the airport all day long.  Then they meet with their elderly parents with their siblings who did the exact same thing and then a few days later, they do it all over again in reverse.  I know that going to a full contact gym is a risk I am also doing, but this just seemed ridiculous.  I thought it over for almost a week before the holidays and made a decision.  I would stop taking the nighttime classes and instead take the 7am classes offered.  I had heard that the attendance was much lower during the early morning sessions, and the classes switched from Muay Thai to yoga from one day to the next.  If anything, I knew from firsthand experience how low the turnout was for yoga, and if I felt uncomfortable, I could just take those classes for a week or two after everyone else on the planet got airplane-turkey-covid.  I know it seems like a ridiculous train of thought, but it's what felt the most safe for me, so I did it.

The yoga class I took went just as planned.  In the entire giant-ass gym, there were maybe six of us, and the session was pretty fricken great.  Despite my hearing being fairly rock fatigued, I managed to listen and keep up with the crew, and only a few times had to do a little cheater pose.  For the most part, I've maintained pretty good flexibility, and I even did two headstands! This was incredibly surprising to me, since, even though I used to do renegade handstands, and taught myself how to walk on my hands, that was a LONG time ago.  I'm thinking fifteen years.  Fifteen years, a million bottles of whiskey, and two frozen shoulders over five of those years, not to mention the inactivity that those injuries caused me for several years afterward.  That's a lot of factors, and I just assumed that those days were over.  Those goofy ass handstands I used to do took a lot of shoulder strength, and a lot of practice.  Back then, in my tiny-ass little home town, I could practice on the sidewalk, on a patch of grass, or even in the street if I wanted to.  Here, in San Francisco in 2020, my hands do not ever touch the ground. Not the sidewalk, not the grass, and definitely not in the street.  I see more broken glass, more heroin needles, and more human shit on the ground, sidewalks and streets of San Francisco in one afternoon, than I have ever seen in my first 40 years of my entire life.  So yeah, I was excited that I could do two different headstands without warning or practice.

But back to the class.  It was great.  I had been to a few of these classes and loved them.  It doesn't seem like it would be a workout, but it always is.  Just twisting my shit around and stretching for an hour and the next day I usually feel like I got hit by a truck.  The time after this class was no different, except for my knee felt a little more out of whack than I expected, but that was no big deal.  It wasn't swollen, red, stiff, or too pained, so I just went easy on it and went about my business.

     The next day was the Muay Thai class.  The class wasn't geared specifically for beginners, but it was not an advanced class.  I'd seen this specific instructors class before, and I was eager to be under the tutelage of another trainer for a short period of time.  Get a different workout, try some different shit, get a new perspective.  His classes looked a little more intense than the ones I was taking, but to be honest, they didn't seem out of my new range, either.  I was a little nervous, but nothing to worry about.

     Right out of the gate, things got wonky.  The class was filled to capacity, which was only ten to twelve students at the time, but...this is exactly what I was trying to avoid.  Maybe I wasn't the only one who thought of this brilliant idea.  I didn't get deterred, though, I trooped on like the trooper I am.  The class was killer.  It was rough, it was intense and it was different.  I loved it.  At the end of the class, the instructor had us do fifty kicks with each leg against the heavy bags.  This is great, because everyone loves kicking, right? It's this primal thing, especially for beginners.  Everything sucks when you start;  Your punches suck, your stance sucks, your block sucks, and you just plain suck.  Heck, even your roundhouse kick sucks total garbage, but it feels really good.  the shin makes a loud CRACK!! up against the bag, and even though you know it sucks, it feels like you at least have that tiny bit of evidence as proof that you can do this crazy shit.  It feels great.

     The first fifty kicks on my weak side were about what I expected.  I have pretty terrible form, and corrected it when I could remember, and about half of these kicks were pretty good.  Not great.  Pretty good.  The other half was pretty terrible, and I was, at the time, O.K. with that.  Switching to my stronger leg was also what I expected, for the most part.  Up until about the forty-fifth one.  Looking back, I assume I didn't rotate my hip enough, and kick forty-six made me wince good and hard, as my shin hit the bag at a pretty bad angle.  My already weak knee felt like something had come loose.  Not so bad that I couldn't walk, or even continue remaining few reps of the exercise, but enough to know something happened.  I hopped on my bike after we finished, and I was already in limbo.  Did something really bad just happen?  My knee didn't hurt too bad, but SOMETHING sure as shit happened, and it was not good at all

     The next day, although I was still in a similar limbo, it was a bit more obvious that I needed to take some time off.  My knee was popping like a knuckle every couple of steps, and although it wasn's stiff, puffy, swolen or super achy, it wasn't right either.  I decided to take it easy for a week.  By this time Thanksgiving had already been a week prior, and a week would have me separated from those that run a bit more fast and loose with Covid precautions than I do to just about the recommended fourteen day quarantine time.  I felt good about that.  The next week I just did minor exercises at home.  Goofy shadow boxing, three rounds of jump-rope (oddly that didn't affect my knee at all), push-ups, and pull-ups. 

     There are a few things that sucked about that time off.  Of course it sucks to have to take time off from something you enjoy, something you are still paying for even if you take time off (and things are really expensive in San Francisco! I'm not tech, I'm pretty poor), and I had a little ego problem.  There was this messed up little part of me that was worried that the few people that started at around the same time as me were going to be so much better than me when I finally returned.  I'd like to believe that I listen to my own advice about not caring about how everyone else is doing and to focus on your own body, your own recovery, and just focus on your own entire journey, but I have to be honest.  I did not.  I was pretty bummed about it.  Also, let's just remember, I'm fifty with a lot of baggage.  The main thought that went through my head was that I was done.  I messed my knee up and I could never go back.  That I SHOULD never go back.  Fifty was too old, after all.  Everyone was right (who is this "everyone"?? Honestly, almost unanimously, you'll find overwhelming support for older beginners, both online and in person when asked about training after your forties and into your fifties), and I was a fool to think I could reverse any of the damage I had done.

     There were a few things that, fortunately, I got wrong AND right during my time away.  First and foremost, my gym pals with similar start dates as mine DID seem better when I returned, but I was stoked to see it.  There was a noticeable difference in their style, form and prowess, and I was honestly a little proud of them.  Secondly, was that not only did I recover, but I learned to make sure I rotate my hip on them damn roundhouse kicks.  I don't think I'll be making that mistake again any time soon.