Wednesday, July 5, 2006

Ow my arm

I've managed to hurt myself yet again.

It's been a while since I had a relatively more severe injury, so I suppose I've had it coming. My left arm got hyper-extended while doing randori in Judo yesterday. Went against that tall green belt whose name I do not recall. I was trying to close my range so that I can actually reach him for kazushi, so I went and grabbed his right pant leg with my left hand, attempting to trap his feet to off-balance him. Unfortunately at the same time he decided to try uchi-mata on me, and kicked his left leg into the back of my left elbow. There was a nice loud crack and my arm just went limp. I can still rotate the arm, so it's not broken or anything, but there's a constant dull pain in my elbow, indicating that the tendon has been sprained.

I iced it and bandaged it as soon as I got home, and today am walking around with my left arm in a sling, trying to explain to people at work who went through the trouble of feigning interest in my well-being the cause of my misfortune. I'm going to be out of commission for three weeks or so. I need to rest the left arm, there's no much I can do about that. I hope that it won't become too weak after almost a month of inactivity. Meanwhile, this could be a bless in disguise. Since I was able to identify the problem with my baji fajing to the alignment of my lower body just before this injury, now I'll have tons of time to work on it whether I like it or not.

Lessons learned:

1. Getting arm hyper-extended sucks.
2. Don't grab the opponent's opposite leg when not in range, and when the opponent still has balance.
3. Doing arm locks with both legs can be potentially very effective.

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