Preparing For my Return to the Gym

In my down time, I spent some time cleaning out part of my room due to sheer boredom. I came across a book I had purchased a while back, Training for Warriors by Martin Rooney. This is a good introductory book for those new to MMA and helps as a guide to get used to the jargon of the sport as well as training techniques commonly used. I would recommend to the novice in the sport as I was, about a year and a half ago, when I purchased it.

I was thumbing through it and came across the section that deals specifically with injuries. I found it odd that this section would pop out, almost as if it were synchronistic, but it had one important part that really hit home for me. It is a strategy for injury that gets the fighter to not only deal with and learn about his/ her injury, but also requires some introspective examination as to how it happened. Honesty is best when dealing with this portion because without it, you will never understand how to avoid reoccurring injuries as a result of poor form/ technique or improper preparation.

Here are the 10 points as presented by Rooney in his "Strategy for Dealing with Injuries" (pg. 282) and the response I gave to each point about my particular injury. (Bold portion taken verbatim from the book and italics is my response)

1. Accept that the injury has occurred, and move forward. Believe it or not, this part is somewhat difficult for me for 2 reasons: A) I was making some real progress and this set back seems like a real barrier to my  improvement. B) Self doubt about my abilities and aggravation over my habits that lead me to this predicament are rather hard to get rid of. 
2. Examine how the injury happened so that it never happens again.  In my case this was the result of poor stretching and warm ups. The gym was exceptionally cold that night and required more of a warm up that usual. Considering that I barely did any warm up, I feel that I deserve this. I also need to address my addiction to coffee. Yes, I said coffee. Big whoop you may say, but it is a tough habit for me to kick and it seems to be holding me back. Even though I drink almost a gallon of water a day, it seems as though coffee leaves me dehydrated and causes other nagging muscle aches, particularly in my shoulders and back. I managed to get a shoulder and back injury this weekend while playing with my daughter after my morning coffee. These are minor "pull" types of tweeks, but cause pain none the less.
3.  Find out all you can about the injury and its rehabilitation. P.R.I.C.E- Protection, Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. This has really helped to speed up the recovery from this muscle injury, which had me on crutches three days ago and I am now walking with a minor limp to avoid re-injuring it.
4. Use every method of rehabilitation that you can get your hands on. I am really focused on PRICE, but am using Advil for pain relief as well as anti-inflammatory.
5. Be consistent and thorough in your rehab. This is a little tough because when I feel improvement, I tend to treat the injury a little different and take it a little easier.
6. Find the outlets and determine what training you can do around the injury. I have been doing chin ups, push ups, and core strengthening work.
7. Focus on areas that you needed to improve pre-injury. (nutrition, mental training, certain body regions, etc.) Hmm. I need to focus on so much. Mental, yes. (I actually got another book for this, but that will be another post) Body, everywhere, but that is just because I am still at the beginning of this journey. But nutrition is the biggest. I am stuck between 175-180 and want to compete at 155 in April. (I am 5'10" for anyone who is wondering) My diet is good, but nowhere near where it needs to be. I take in too many carbohydrates, via fruits and grains, and not nearly enough vegetables. I need to reduce my coffee/caffeine intake, and by reduce I mean get rid of. It stinks that I feel I need a boost of energy and I want to free myself of that.
8. Don't test the injury while healing and re-irritate it.  OK, that is really hard as well, especially since I am itching to get back in there.
9. Develop a list of the things that injury is trying to tell you. A) I need to improve my warm up routine. B) I need to train twice a day. (more for reasons of strength and preparation for competition) C) I need better nutrition. D) I need better technique.
10. Don't forget what you learned from the injury for the future. 10-4, Mr. Rooney. Hopefully this blog serves that purpose.

I am developing an improved training plan to help me breakthrough this plateau and propel me further toward my stated goals, but that will be another post. Thanks for reading.

Planning the Garden means Planning Nutrition

Since I am a little laid up here, I decided to start planning my garden that I will use to supply most of my food for my diet in the coming months. I will get into the ins and outs of the plan and the steps I take through this process in later posts, but I figured I would let you know what book I picked up and began reading about this.

The book is Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. The link on the right looks like it is a newer version compared to the one I am reading, but that is fine. If you want to purchase it, you will have new and more up to date info than I do, so you'll have to share a little info with me. My father in law was the one who gave me the book and it seems like a great way to get into gardening with less work and less waste in the way of harvest. I am not too far in, but as I read, I will let people know about my plan. I am looking forward to getting started.

As far as the injury is concerned, it is only day one and I already have cabin fever. Oh well, more time to read. Thanks for reading.

My Path to Change

So not too long ago I was not in the best of shape. It was a little over four years ago that my wife gave birth to my daughter. During this pregnancy my wife was not well, mentally and physically. She had a miscarriage about a year before and that has stuck with us to this very day. She was also battling debilitating migraines and blood pressure issues as a result of the pregnancy. Thankfully, my daughter was fine and is now a very active and healthy four year old. My wife and I were a different story.

The two of us put on substantial weight and also picked up some bad habits as a result of the stress and depression. I was drinking and my wife was eating sweets, which was an extremely tough addiction for her to break. At one point we were able to break out of this destructive cycle, myself with mixed martial arts and my wife with walking. This got us to a better place, but then we had some troubles with uncertainty with our jobs, which lead me to a new position that had me commuting 2 hours in one direction.

Needless to say, we regressed even further than before and it was not pretty. I ballooned up to 225 pounds, which looked ridiculous on my 5'10" frame. I was lethargic and always achy. Most of my nights were horrible because I had trouble sleeping and was battling horrible bouts of indigestion and acid reflux. I was also drinking more than I ever did before. Funny thing is, I was not an angry or abusive drinker, quite to the contrary I was the fun guy. But inside was a constant loop of regret and embarrassment playing in my head. My work was not affected, but it was a horrible source of stress. All of this at the age of 33.

My wife was not doing any better. She was taking prescriptions for both her headaches and her blood pressure. She was not sleeping because the drugs caused her to hallucinate. They also caused even more weight gain as a side effect, which then contributed to snoring and sleep apnea. She is such a patient and loving person and rarely has mood swings, but during this time, she would go through such highs and lows emotionally that it was frightening.

I do not want to focus on her too much but to say that she had about all she could take and initiated the change. She went to visit a local chiropractor and looked into a 12 week detox, diet, and exercise program for her. When she came home with the info, we looked at it together and it seemed very difficult. It was a calorie restricted diet that was extremely similar to a Raw/ Vegan Diet. I told her that I would do it with her so that she felt she had support and off we went. This diet was very close to Vegan, which was a huge change for us, and introduced numerous herbal supplements, vitamins, and minerals to our diet. I have to say it was very overwhelming at first.

Well I don't want to drag this along too much, but we made it through to the other side and broke some really bad habits and learned some really healthy new ones. I lost 50 pounds and was energetic enough to start MMA again. I am looking to start competing at an amateur level soon. I have stopped drinking all together and have far less stress and depression in my life. All the physical ailments that I was experiencing have gone and I am now left feeling younger than ever.

My wife lost 40 pounds and is far more active than she was before. She rarely has headaches and has not experienced the debilitating migraines she was dealing with regularly since completion. Her blood pressure has gone down to a healthy level and she did all of this without the help of the prescription drugs. They seemed to just cover the problem where as this "Raw/ Vegan Diet" (calling it that because in my mind that is really  what it was) solved her problems and helped her body deal with them with the assistance of healthy foods. Both of our sleeping habits have improved tremendously and we sleep less and feel even more rested.

I want to wrap up this post, but I have to say nutrition is now something I cherish and I will never stray again from a healthy lifestyle. I plan on growing my own food this season so I can be even more independent of all the junk and the businesses that made that junk available to us.

Thanks for sticking in there. Have a good night.