Tuesday 16 March 2010

Resting injuries

About 3 weeks ago, I felt a strain in my left calf muscle. Did I rest it? No. I was so happy to be in the groove with my running and training that I ignored it. 1 week later and I felt the strain again. In fact it stopped me from going for my run - I had only jogged 100 metres when the pain was too much and I had to turn-around and walk home.

So, for the past 2 weeks I've rested it. No running and very limited running during karate training sessions. Yesterday morning and this morning I was back to my daily 1.5 mile run! Excellent. I'm really pleased that I rested it. I'm also very pleased that I was able to get back to running 1.5 miles without any stopping. Now, back to building this up to 2.5 miles, then 3.3 miles, etc.... until I'm up to 5 miles.

Curse those injuries!

Friday 5 March 2010

Training update

I currently have a pulled muscle in my calf. It went during the warm up last Friday (but, it had gone previously to that). So, as it's been recurring I haven't done any training for a week. I'll go back tonight but, I won't do any jogging.

This has put a big hole in my training! Grrr!

Anyway, it's the 2nd grading of my students this Sunday - so I need to focus my attention on that.

Karate & Ki by Kenji Ushiro Sensei cont'd

The book arrived on Wednesday and I have almost read through it.

I really like his use of riding a bike as a metaphor - did you ever know anyone who knew how to ride a bike as a result of reading about it? No - you have to do it (and fall off a few times probably). But, then it is ingrained, intuitive, automatic, subconscious.

(A bit ironic writing a book about that subject :-)

His book has helped me make sense of a number of concepts that I have read about in classic martial arts books like "the unfettered mind", "book of five rings", "the life giving sword".