bjjasia

I got the suggestion from another forum member that it would benefit the community to have a topic where people can share their experiences with injuries and such from training.

It's something that is bound to happen on some level or another. Remember, this is a contact sport, haha. I've had my share of injuries both small and large.

I'm sure each injury can be posted on it's own topic but here's something to get things started.

Here's a list of mine that I can remember (in no particular order)

1. benign-positional-vertigo
-This was caused by fighting a baseball choke from the bottom for too long. I blame myself for not tapping sooner. Anyways, it's a horrible thing to experience and no one will sympathize with you unless they've gone through it themselves. All I could do was wait for it to pass. I was back to training by the following week.

2. dislocated-shoulder
-My younger brother did this to me while defending a fully extended armbar. He's much stronger and heavier than I am so he basically benched me over his body and I didn't let go, landing on my shoulder and hearing that lovely 'crunch-squish' sound. I popped it back in place and man did that hurt. It took me 3-4 months to get full movement back and about 8 months to feel confident with that shoulder. At the time I had it checked out, the doctor said it was OK but a full year later, another doctor saw a hair-line fracture. My right shoulder is now lower and slightly behind where it should be. I have a bump protruding from my shoulder, that is the tail end of my collar bone. Another instance where I should have been the smarter more experiences one and just let go.

3. jammed/crunched fingers
-Both thumbs, big-toes, pinkies have been jammed at some point or caught in someone's gi. They turn that lovely purple-green color and you then have sausage-like digits. Just taped them up till they were strong again and worked on making my grips count and attentive enough to let go when needed. Sometimes these can't be avoided and it's just a freak-accident.

4. black-eye/bruises
-I'm sure we're all familiar with the elbow-on-the-thigh-pass. I've did it myself when I first started training but I stopped. Perhaps that's the difference is that I stopped once I learned that eventually, you'll roll with someone that can tolerate the pain. Nowadays, if you're trying to dig your elbows into my thighs to pass my guard you're just going to eat my shoulder when I get side-control. And for those of you who like to triangle or squeeze my head without my arm inside, and basically cause me cauliflower-ear or bruised cheeks, again, I will put my knee on your face. Everyone will go through their growing-pains of BJJ and hopefully will graduate to a more technical game. Whether it's cause you wise-up to better jiu-jitsu or someone keeps returning the favor with knee-ride.

5. ripped/broken toe-nails
-Again, my fault for not keeping them short.

6. popped-jaw/tooth chipped
-I must love pain cause I realize in writing this list I fight some things for way too long. This was early on in my training, perhaps the first year and the guy got my back and went for a RNC. He didn't have my neck but had a cross-face. He proceeded to squeeze and in doing so he forced my jaw to push back into the cartilage socket next to my ear. I heard a crunch sound and then a shooting pain from my ear to the jaw. I had bruised the soft tissue that kept my jaw in place. I can now pop my jaw at will and it hurts everytime. This took me several months to eat without shoot pain in my jaw due to the bruised tissue. In this situation I think it was 50/50. It was definitely a dick thing to do (cross-face to RNC) but then I could have come to terms with what he was willing to do to me a tap for the sake of my health.

I am not proud of any of these injuries and if I had a choice I would much rather be injury free cause it's all going to catch up to me as I get older. It will take longer and longer for my body to recovery and that means more time off the mat. Now I have enough experience to know when to tap and how to gauge the pace when dealing with guys different levels of skill.

Train hard but train so that you're not cutting down the number of training partners at your gym.

Wha!? No one else suffers from such injuries or has any problem from rolling?

Perhaps all of you have better heads on your shoulders and tap before anything bad happens. Hmmmm.

Luke

i have had more injury during bjj training, than during other martial arts training.
here is a small list of what i had.

Broked a small bonein my shoulder, trying to resist a swip. i guess the whole of my opponent was stronger than my arm alone.... heheheh beginner time.

broked a few fingers, including my small toe ligaments, which was scary due to the color it got.

I suffer quite painfull neck problems. which in thailand were dificult to notice, as i would get massages every 3 days or so. a litle bit more expensive here in europe.

I broke a rib while pulling guard from standing, the opponent was quite heavy.

as usual i dislocate my right knee more or less, once a year, more recently (last sat) i dislocated it but this time , seems rather serious, i broke a muscle in the knee and possibly part of my inner meniscus.

I still love bjj.

Frederic

frederic wrote:i have had more injury during bjj training, than during other martial arts training.
here is a small list of what i had.

Broked a small bonein my shoulder, trying to resist a swip. i guess the whole of my opponent was stronger than my arm alone.... heheheh beginner time.

broked a few fingers, including my small toe ligaments, which was scary due to the color it got.

I suffer quite painfull neck problems. which in thailand were dificult to notice, as i would get massages every 3 days or so. a litle bit more expensive here in europe.

I broke a rib while pulling guard from standing, the opponent was quite heavy.

as usual i dislocate my right knee more or less, once a year, more recently (last sat) i dislocated it but this time , seems rather serious, i broke a muscle in the knee and possibly part of my inner meniscus.

I still love bjj.

Frederic

What other martial arts have you trained in and for how long?

i did taek wondo for about 2 years, and then passed to hapkido for a year, which led me to stay a year in korea to learn sun moo do. and i then discovered bjj and muay thai. which fits perfectly together as a training. in the future in 10 15 years probably aikido.
What about you?

Hey Frederic,

This is Luke from BFC and EMAC, hahaha. I thought it might be you but wasn't sure till you wrote the 'sun moo do'.

Glad to hear you're still training. When might you be back in Thailand?

Luke

I KNOW IT IS YOU BRO!!!!hehehe , i was coming back this friday, but i hurt my knee last sat and had to cancel my trip!!! i will be coming depending on the injury, i did a mri, or scan of my knee yesterday, and will get the results this coming tuesday. if it is only muscular i will probably come in may, but if the meniscus is hurt, i'll come this summer. i miss training at emac and bfc, say hi to everyone. cheers

frederic wrote:I KNOW IT IS YOU BRO!!!!hehehe , i was coming back this friday, but i hurt my knee last sat and had to cancel my trip!!! i will be coming depending on the injury, i did a mri, or scan of my knee yesterday, and will get the results this coming tuesday. if it is only muscular i will probably come in may, but if the meniscus is hurt, i'll come this summer. i miss training at emac and bfc, say hi to everyone. cheers

Sorry to hear of the injury but good to hear you'll be back. Keep us posted.

can't wait to be back, by the way please keep a patch of the bjj asia community for me, so i can put on my gi, it looks pretty cool. tx

frederic wrote:can't wait to be back, by the way please keep a patch of the bjj asia community for me, so i can put on my gi, it looks pretty cool. tx

Definitely.

My injuries :

1. Cauliflower ear.
At one moment it was SO swollen, that it was really hideous - like an alien-from-outer-space tumor on my ear. I thought it would ease up after a few days/ a week, but it didn't. So after looking around on the internet, I had the brilliant idea of taking care of it myself and started trying to punch holes with a needle in it. Skin isn't easy to penetrate when you do it yourself, and i ended up with some tiny punctures which did bleed, but did absolutely nothing to drain the blood from my cauliflower. I also guess that by the time I decided to try to drain it myself, the blood that amassed in the ear might have thickened too much.
So in the end I decided to go to a doctor, who had to ask advice from a colleague, and the advice was to just wait and let it go away by itself.
Wasn't sure if I could trust them, as I heard not so many doctors are familiar with cauliflower ears (at least not in Belgium, where I was at the time).
It went away by itself eventually, and what is still left now is just visible enough as testimoney of my BJJ training, but nothing to scare people away - as it was before.

2. Training partner during sparring did a brusque abrupt armbar, too eager to secure the win during sparring : hyperextension of the joint to the point I thought there was really something wrong, after a week or so went to hospital, but they couldn't see anything. Took a long time to heal.

3. Knee ligament torn or severely damaged (never really known what exactly). From standing position, partner jumps guard (was drill practice), but didn't close his legs round my hips, and just falls down, weight on the side of a knee. A snap which several people could hear, and just like a sack of potatoes collapsed on the floor. And I could forget about the SEA tournament which was at the end of that week !
Mentally this was a real real bad injury : not only could i forget about my first ever tournament, but i was really worried about recovery. Knee injuries can't be any good, and i started imagining a whole range of different scenario's. Feared that in best case i would lose half a year to a year training, or if worse would need surgery. And at my age didn't feel I had the luxury of waisting so much time : was "already" 42 when just started bjj, didn't want to lose more time than i already had.
First thing in my (and others in the club's) mind was to go to hospital and i don't know what more, completely worried, visions of possible operation, rehabilitation exercises, etc etc... Prof. Pedro Schmall took a look at it, manipulated it a bit, and told me to forget about going to hospitals who would do all kinds of expensive examinations which would only serve to make me poorer and the hospital richer, and would be no good to my mental state to wait and wait in hospital. I should beter get some rest and put my mind to ease, apply cold compresses, etc... He had seen it before, it would heal eventually, and no doctors needed. And anyway, in Brasil there is someone with one very very short leg (doesn't even have a knee), and he was a brown belt despite of it : made me have visions of me having a half useless leg but still being able to do BJJ )))
It felt like a leap of faith (close your eyes, trust me, now jump), but decided to go along with his advice, going against my instincts (go see doctor, go hospital,...!!). And I'm happy I did. It took several months, and without doctors and hospitals and all kinds of examinations it turned out as Pedro told me : it healed by itself, though extreme pressure under certain angle (only happened once since then) can make me feel it a bit again.

4. bruised rib : me and sparring partner going too wild at it, he has me in back control. And we're just trying to muscle each other out.

But what about injuries we caused ? Can't be possible that we only sustain injuries without causong some ourselves...

1. Damaged my brother's meniscus, so he needed an operation, because of a knee-lock I discovered myself by coincidence. He had weak knees and had an operation on it years before that though, and when i applied the lock, i did it very very gradually to show him, until it hurt, by the time the damage was done. Important note : this was BEFORE i trained in a real BJJ club, when me, brother and 2-3 other friends tried to train BJJ on our own without guidance because we didn't have a club in our area : was when i was 5 months in Belgium before started training at EMAC Bangkok (my first official BJJ trainings) after being back in Thailand. The stories of how we all started with BJJ would be an interesting topic.
2. "overenthusiastic" armbar left a friend's arm injured for at least a month

Now, apart from a list of injuries, for me the most important are the conclusions :

1. All injuries i sustained where from beginners. Not just white belts, but "beginner white belts".
And that's the way "it should be" : ideally injuries should come from sparring with white belts in their early training months. And that's where all my injuries came from until now.

2. If a teacher makes safety remarks, warns about certain movements that they can be dangerous,... that might well be the most important part of the training. Forgetting a move is nothing compared to causing injury because you didn't listen to safety remarks about certain moves.

3. BJJ safety rules that I've learned : (which ones did I forget ???)
- awareness : * be aware of the environment (other's solling, walls, mirrors,..)
* be aware when training partner might not be able to tap properly
* be aware when your own body might unintentionally hurt your partner (like your own full weight which might suddenly crush on a joint or so, suddenly dropping your heavy weight body on a young featherweight rolling partner may bruise a rib, etc...)
- use slow motion during some critical moments : after securing the lock position, to the point where the lock becomes painful, slow to super slow motion is as fast as it should go. If because of the slow motion I lose the lock-position, or even therefore lose the sparring fight, then there is something wrong with my technique.
- when trying to break a grip as almost final part of an armbar or other lock, I find it important to be aware of the dynamics going on : both sides might be using full force to keep the grip and to break the grip. At the moment the other has to let go of the grip, he just lost all power, while you are pulling with all you've got, and suddenly there's no more resistance. At that point it might be difficult or impossible to stop the momentum and might injure the other. So while trying to break the grip i find it important to be aware that the other one can let go any second, and to be prepared to "brake" and go into slow motion instantly. The other way around : if you're feeling that you'll have to let go of the grip any moment (and subsequently will have to tap) and get arm-barred or so, it might be wise to tap already before you let go of your grip.
- any victory in sparring at the cost of almost dislocating a jaw, crushing my partner's lips, chipping his teeth,... or what else do we have, is merely testimony to bad BJJ game rather than being a so-called "victory".

And as a last remark a rule in the club in Belgium where I trained for a few months :
"Anyone who causes an injury is not allowed back on the mat, until the injured is able to roll again at 100%"
Don't know if they actually applied this or used this as an "awareness threat", but the mere thought of this punishment gives an idea on what it means injuring someone during class.

Nick, just some thoughts

Well finnaly my knee is ok, or so, it was a bad knee twist, I don't really know how to call it in english. The fact is ythat it opened my eyes, as I am getting older I might hurt my knee more and more, until I break something unfixable. Therefore I organised a meeting with a knee surgeon to get more accurate analysis of my knee, and maybe get a ligament surgery. The very sad point in all this is that I won't be able to train for 6 months. I fell like criing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have suffered literally dozens of injuires, small and significant. One thing that is clear is that as your body "hardens" to combat, injuries become less frequent. Take home message- give yourself several weeks, and several months if you are over 35-40 years of age, to perform muscles, cardo and flexibility conditioning before you attempt hard sparring or competition. If you dont, your odds of injury are significant.

Second, ICE, ICE, ICE. Did someone say ICE?

We need to get in the habit of immediately icing new injuries and applying ice routinely and immediately after training to old, recurring injuries. I dont have time or space here to go into detials about how this works, but it does. Diligent application of ice packs to injuries, especially IMMEDIATELY after training will greatly speed recovery and redeuce pain.