Aches and Pains

I feel like I am healing very slowly from a lot of the aches and pains I am developing from sparring; so many in fact that I’m starting to get concerned both with their quantity and their persistence. Let me describe them in a kinda-sorta chronological fashion.

My right foot’s little bones (that’d be those metatarsals) have started locking up. It happened the first time way back when I was first learning my camo belt combinations. The jump kicks on combination #3 made my foot twinge really hard whenever I’d put weight on it and could only be relieved by a forced and uncomfortable pop by twisting my foot… just so. That pain came back after last sparring and no popping has been possible (and the attempts to discover the relieving pop have been painful on top of unsuccessful).

My left wrist got sprained a while back–I’d date it about the first sparring experience after getting my green belt so that’d be about a month and a half ago. I had an embarassing fall while attempting to do a hook-kick-to-the head and caught my fall on my right wrist. It has healed enough that I’m good with straight pressure: meaning I can do knuckle (not palm-of-hand) push-ups and punches, but not lateral things like blocking with my wrist/hand. The occasional times I do end up blocking with my hand/wrist make the pain flare up again. Yoga seems to be helping this one, but that’s a long time of lingering pain/disability. I started sparring with my right foot leading because of this pain.

My left hand is the most recent casualty. One of the joints in those small bones (that’d be the metacarpals this time around) has gone all wonky. Unlike the metatarsal issue, this feels more like a bruising problem and not something that a popping could even temporarily relieve. This pain flairs up much more frequently, because there are many things that impact the outside of that hand. Last sparring, this hand was more of a concern that I actually started switching back to leading with my left foot.

I won’t include the effects of being round kicked in the neck twice in a single match because it didn’t cause any internal damage (and being embarassingly funny).

My attempt at shielding the paining parts of my body while sparring and doing other activities has lead with limited success and only lead to enough other parts of my body getting injured that I’m now having to decide which parts require shielding the most and that has me concerned.

Something that’s getting my gall, though, is that sparring is so important in taekwondo that I’m faced with two decisions:

1. Keep the same classes but stop sparring. The problem is that one of the classes is straight-sparring so there’d be no reason to be there if I wasn’t sparring (I don’t think doing drills would be any better than sparring, at this point). The other problem is that if I choose not to participate in sparring, I will not get credit for the class I attended but did not spar in. I’m sure Master K. would make an exception for me because of this, but it makes me prefer to just not go to the classes on principle.
2. Modify my class schedule to include only classes where sparring seems to be traditionally absent. This seems unacceptable, again on principle, and makes me want to just skip classes on principle.

It frustrates me that my only option seems to be to skip classes, because that would mean I would be skipping ALL of my classes and I can see these various aches easily taking another month to heal to a comfortable-with-sparring level. I’ve paid for these classes and it makes me very frustrated that I haven’t even got my stripe for sparring since, out of all the things I’ve been doing, sparring has been the most emphasized. I feel like I should be able to step back from sparring and not get those embarrassing pink circles that make my time card look like I’m an irresponsible chit that needs the visual jab-in-the-ribs every time he takes the card off the wall.

(Hell, I got my combination stripe and the only day I actually worked combinations into my out-of-class practice was that very day, and in the 30 minutes right before the class I got my stripe in. What?!) I think I’ve more than displayed my skill in sparring to a stripable level (I even think I’ve displayed my form skillfully enough, but there’s only so much I can act indignant enough since I know I haven’t taken the classes enough to justify even loosely the obtaining of two stripes.) The implied saying behind “no pain no gain” does not seem to be applying here. I think I’ve endured more than enough pain to have gained my sparring stripe and that’s not even including the struggle and pain I’ve endured because I’ve tried to keep sparring so consistently in face of a family that very much disaproves of the violent aspects of my chosen hobby.

I hate how I stop being coherent if I let my fingers stay too long connected to the keyboard. I’M OFF!