Episode 735 - Training While Severely Injured

In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about Training While Severely Injured.

Training While Severely Injured - Episode 735

Have you ever been bedridden? Were you hurt to a point where you couldn’t move or do you have an illness that is truly debilitating? If you find yourself in that situation, what else can you do? In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about Training the mind While Severely Injured.

After listening to the episode it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it.

Show Transcript

You can read the transcript below.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome to Martial Arts Radio today, Andrew and I are talking about training while you are severely injured. Sadly, big injuries happen. And we're going to talk about how to maintain training and we don't maintain how to continue training. If you find yourself in one of those circumstances, if you're new to the show, I'm Jeremy Lesniak joined by Andrew Adams. 

And here on martial arts radio, we talk about martial arts. We both love traditional martial arts. And it was okay, we worked hard to connect, educate and entertain those of you out there who also love traditional martial arts, if you want to see all the things that we're doing to that end, go to whistlekick.com. You're gonna find links and pages to all the projects and all the products that we make. And if you find a product that you like, in our store, whistlekick.com You can use the code PODCAST15.

Andrew Adams:

What are you doing with the shirt? 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Oh, you're demonstrating the show products.

Andrew Adams:

Or maybe this hat.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Martial Arts Radio gets its own website. Let's look at martialartsradio.com, we bring you two episodes each and every week. And if you like what we do, please consider supporting us so we can keep doing it. We've got a Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekiick, we've got the store. You can tip us at the podcast website, you can do all kinds of things to show your support. And the whole list of them is at whistlekick Martial Arts Radio now at whistlekick.com/family. The family pages for those of you who truly love what we do, you have to type it in. We update at least once a week and give you some fun behind the scenes stuff to go along with it. You've never been bedridden?

Andrew Adams:

No, I have not. I've not been bedridden. Have you? 

Jeremy Lesniak:

I don't think so. I think the only times I've ever been in bed like that were when I was sick. So yes. 

Andrew Adams:

Yeah, yeah, I've never been hurt to the point that I couldn't move.

Jeremy Lesniak:

But we've had people on the show who have had. People who talk about being in a really bad car accident where you know, pins and not walking. Yeah, it doesn't cause cancer. And you've got a lot where you're weak, but you're awake, right? Like there are plenty of times where this could happen not to any one person. But across the breadth of all of you. Some of you have endured this and others will endure this. And so today's episode is about how to find some training within that very difficult period of time.

Andrew Adams:

And I would go so far as to say even if you don't experience those difficulties, and I hope you don't, I hope nobody out there. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

If I could wave a magic wand, no one would ever have to go through this.

Andrew Adams:

But even if you don't, there might be some ideas that we give you that you can still use even if you're not.

Jeremy Lesniak:

When we were setting this up, for example, you talked about a lot of synergy between what we're going to talk about and driving in a car. Because as we often do, let's talk about definitions here. Let's talk about what we're talking about. We're not talking about it, I sprained my ankle. At class. Oh, I have a hangnail. I'm blue. Those are the worst. I have a bruise, right. For most of us, the majority of injuries we have, we're still going to go to class, we might modify what we're doing. If you train on your own, you're modifying how you train. That's totally fine. We're not talking about that, we're talking about I can't get to class because I'm physically restrained, or I cannot walk. I cannot drive. It is impossible for me to get there. 

I am confined to a bed or maybe I can go from chair to bed. And the idea of standing up and trying to do anything without falling over. It is not going to happen. Now I think we need to preface this with the fact that since neither of us have gone through this. We're speculating, this is all speculation and that's okay. Because we're gonna start from somewhere. And this is a good time to say if you are someone who has gone through this and you have specific feedback that we can tack on to this episode we will want to hear from you please.

Andrew Adams:

Absolutely. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Email me Jeremy@whistlekick.com. If you can't train the body, you have to train the mind. 

How do we train our mind? Well, I think there's two ways. One, you're good and bad. No right and wrong. One is you're training the brain by just learning and others as you are training using your brain. And I think those are two different things. Observation versus the stimulus being from external versus internal.

Andrew Adams:

I think so. And I think  training your brain has to me, involves watching or reading, learning by putting knowledge in your brain, which is different from using your brain to work on things you already know.

Jeremy Lesniak:

YouTube. This is where YouTube is amazing. Is there a form that you're rusty on? Is it a good time? You're probably going to find somebody out there doing it pretty darn close to your way. Or maybe your structure is already giving you a video, right? 

Andrew Adams:

I mean, that would work too.

Jeremy Lesniak:

There's a lot there. The other way being, I'm thinking through something I'm walking through in my brain, my form, and I'm visualizing the application of that form.

Andrew Adams:

You know, I think the brain is the most underutilized training tool that we have. For sure. And I think we, the brain, are so powerful. And Abernathy had a great discussion. I listened to the beginning of 2020, when a bunch of stuff was going down, and some things happened. Some things happened, right. And he made an analogy and chatted about how when, sometimes when you're reading a book, we're not talking to martial arts book, we're just talking, you're reading a book. 

They're just words on a page. But yet, when you then go watch the movie of the book you just read, you're like, that's not what I don't. It's funny, I didn't picture them looking like that. I pictured him looking like whatever you had in your head. But they were just words on a page, but your mind created what you thought they looked like. Or you're reading the book and something bad happens in the book and you get sad. And your brain has made a connection to what's in the book. Your brain is so powerful. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Have you seen this? I see the show up on social media. A couple sentences, and they'll use the correct first and last letter. And the letters in between are jumbled. Sometimes not even letters and your brain corrects what it's supposed to be. Your brain fills in gaps. Yeah, magic I posters, right. Like all of these things are filling in gaps. And most of us in modern society use that fact as a gimmick. 

Like, it's kind of fun. It's kind of neat. But it can be harnessed. That's what you're talking about is this idea of harnessing that to further your development. I think all of us have heard the advice to visualize the win or visualize success, visualize the life that you want, whatever it is, however it manifests. Visualization is something that most of us see at least some value in. I'm not saying we're talking about it at any particular level. But if you can't move, what you can imagine, that's pretty powerful. 

Andrew Adams:

Absolutely. And, you know, using your brain or your mind to think of things, and just running through stuff.

Jeremy Lesniak:

What are some examples of things people can run through mentally? 

Andrew Adams:

I've run through Bunkai. So we're gonna veer away from your bedroom, and then you can't move at all. But because I wasn't that way. But I couldn't leave the house stuck in the house. I still wanted to train. Sure I could do kata in which I did the basics and stuff. But I realized, you know what, I'm starting to forget my Bunkai because it's been four months since I've had a training partner. 

So I started in my head, saying, what's the attack coming in? So I'm standing all by myself. And I visualize the punches coming in. I'm stepping off to the side. I'm doing whatever technique I need to so their body is then going to react in this way. I'm going to follow up with this. There was no one there to do that. 

But I could see it in my brain and still work through what I needed to. I could still theoretically do that. If I was bedridden, or stuck in a wheelchair and couldn't actually move at all. I could still sit there and visualize Okay, the punch is coming in. We're moving this way. And I'm still utilizing my brain to train.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I've done some things that are very similar. One of my favorite things to do within training is what I would call slow kind of anything goes, sparring really safe. But you come in and punch and I block and maybe there's a joint lock in there. I love doing that. I live alone. I don't have my own school. Yep. When I'm going and I'm training with people, we're usually working on very specific things, not broad generalizations of things. 

So I've got to do this stuff on my own. And I have been doing it on my own. And I've gotten a lot better at doing it and the ability to visualize it, to the point where, when we did it all on the weekend, there were things that we did all weekend that had only ever been in my brain. So that was kind of neat. because prior to that, I would have said, I can only train things that I am very comfortable with. I'm only ever going to be able to mentally practice a form that I know really well or knew really well. I'm not going to be able to learn a new form. You've been training a little while and you know how your body works? Iis it easy? No, but it can be done. But it's a skill set like anything else. 

And if you are willing to invest the time, because sadly, most of the circumstances where this is going to come up, this is not a day or two, no, this is weeks, months, could be years. It could be the end of someone's life. But they don't want to stop training because they love training. You can learn new material and develop new skills. Conceptually, right. And go from there. The mind body connection is pretty powerful. There are some really interesting things that go on, that we're not going to dig into around making things feel real and the impact of that, right, like we've we know that you can trick the mind in such a way that the body feels things? Sure. You can do some of that.

I'm not saying visualize, oh, I'm sparring. And I get kicked in the face because I'm trying to lose a tooth sitting in bed. But like anything else, the more real you make it, the more value there is. We shifted from I think we started talking about learning new stuff and refining existing stuff. So let's go back to learning new stuff because you use a slice of that dichotomy that I hadn't before. 

Andrew Adams:

Yeah, so learning new stuff, reading, watching things that you hadn't, you know, just learning, you know, using your brain to learn something new that you didn't before. Those are the two that I can think of.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Not everyone knows this. But we mentioned you too. How amazing YouTube is. Wikipedia was supposed to be the bulk of all knowledge. It's YouTube. You can learn anything on YouTube. YouTube has a slow function, you can slow things down to I believe it's a quarter speed, you can actually go less than less than a quarter.

Andrew Adams:

You can. So if you're on a laptop, if you're on a desktop or a laptop, you can go 75,50,25. But then there's a custom button. Okay, it goes by point 05 increments, I haven't gone slow, super slow. But I've slowed stuff down to like 85% instead of 75. Or 75 was too slow. Full speed was too fast at 80%.

Jeremy Lesniak:

If you want to learn new stuff, and it is physical stuff, and you're trying to visualize yourself doing it. There you go. That's a great feature. 10%.20% speed. How many times do you have to go through that form before you get it? And you get to the end after five, six times you press pause. Can I do it? Okay, step out. I do this. “Yeah, go here. Oh, shoot. What was that move?” because you were probably going to do that if you were in class learning and anyone? What about non physical skills?

Andrew Adams:

Just reading, just learning things. Learning about if you're, if you're a Shotokan practitioner, reading Gichin Funakoshi books, you know, just reading there's plenty of the guiding principles. So just taking in knowledge to learn, or maybe you're shutting down practitioner and you want to learn about go through, find the book and just start learning.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Or maybe you want to learn about flexibility, or how short the body develops muscles or let the central nervous system do. Or maybe you want to listen to a couple of goofballs talk about martial arts.

Andrew Adams:

Or maybe you're doing physical therapy. And you start relating, oh, I'm doing this there. She's having me here. She's having me do this movement. How does this relate like, don't just do the move, because you're being asked to do it. Although if you're being asked to do it, do the move. But think about how this is? How is this going to translate into my training, when I'm able to go back.

Jeremy Lesniak:

One of the things that I get his feedback from people from, from people who listen to the show, is that we, in our discussions, in our interviews, provide a context, we fill a gap in a sense in their training. That's not the best word, but it's the word most of us use, that they didn't know was a gap. For most of us, we get ready for class, we go to class, we participate in class, we leave class, we come home, we are unprepared for a craft class, right? We're done, we change, we shower. And in between, then the next time we train, which could be at home, it could be in class, sometimes we will think about what we have done. And yet, if I ask most people, what is being a martial artist to you, they will talk about lifestyle aspects that we'll talk about how it makes them better. 

And so one of the things that I think is important to acknowledge, because I get more out of it than any of you. Okay, there's a reason that 700 Some episodes later, we're still doing this, I'm still doing this, because I get tremendous value out of it. It's not for the money, that's for sure. My lifestyle as a martial artist is enhanced from talking about listening to understanding my own perspectives on martial arts, yours, guests, listeners, etc. It's all related. 

So I bring that up to say that there is a lot to be done in self exploration of why you train, how you train. Considering your training, journaling on your training, reading other people's journaling on trading, reading books on training, listening to the multitude of other podcasts that are out there, many of which we love and support. Yep. And the recognition that you could fill far more than 24 hours a day, with stuff to eat for the rest of your life, and several other lifespans and not run out of stuff to consume. If you've just come into what we do now, I don't know, we've got well over 700 hours. 

Andrew Adams:

So yeah, this will be episode 730. Something.

Jeremy Lesniak:

So it's a lot of weeks. Yep. Probably not going to listen to him straight through. But maybe more power to your people. I just found you last month, and I want to start it over and I'm on episode 112. 

Andrew Adams:

And I'm like, wow, keep on chugging. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Wow. I don't like my voice that much. Yeah, and I live with it. We digress. If you came into this episode expecting, okay, you're gonna do this drill, and you're gonna do this. That's not how this works. You're bedridden, you're very, very injured, you're severely injured. Or perhaps you have a substantial illness, you are very weak and struggled to get out of bed temporarily or permanently. Doesn't mean you can't train. It doesn't mean that you cannot get better as a martial artist. And this is why my definition of martial arts resonates so strongly for me. And I think for some others, personal development being the first to work, you can continue to develop who you are through your training, because all training is not physical. 

Andrew Adams:

Yeah, I agree. I agree. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

I've heard anecdotes and we've had people on the show who have talked about working on their forums while they were laid up with two broken legs and things like that. And I hear those stories. And it's so powerful. And yet I hope I never have to implement that kind of training, not because I don't want to train in that way, but because I don't want to be restricted. But I know that if I had to I would be well, because I would let me say this. 

Because I would be setting the goal for myself that when I get through this, I will be better. I will continue that development of whatever I can. I'm going to be working on my forms, I'm probably going to go back and relearn all the forms. I forgot. From all the schools I trained at me like, alright, what were those shorter Common forms? And I would still have a hard time remembering a Shotokan.

Andrew Adams:

Yep. Well, and you know, the other thing that we didn't touch upon, and I don't know how factual this is, but in the movie, Bruce Lee wrote his book while bedridden, well, we'll just reciting to his wife, you'll just write it down. I don't know that that's true. But there's an example of something you could do short, I mean, I would be hard pressed to argue that he wasn't still training while writing a book. You know, because he's constantly thinking about martial arts, that's training.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And let me attack this in one other way. Don't be so sad, or disappointed, or down on yourself, or depressed or cynical, that you are not willing to do what you can. Western culture is very much becoming an all or nothing you do or you do an art. But that is not the way the world works. World is shades of gray. We've talked about this many, many times.

 And I refer you back to something we set on the show one to two years ago that I still think about often that is very, very poignant. We don't take it right away, when your skills degrade. We don't look at the older person and say, You know what, they've been training for 60 years, they used to be really good, but now they're less good. So we're going to demote them a couple notches.

Andrew Adams:

Now, green belt. Doesn't happen, shouldn't happen. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Your rank is reflective of what you have done, the position that you are in is reflective of what you have done, you still have the knowledge, you may not be able to implement it in the same way. But there's always a benefit to whatever the circumstances. And I bet for a lot of you that if you are unable to train and the way that you want to train, there are likely types of training that you can do that you've been ignoring that somebody along the way said, you know, you'd really benefit from doing this or that or the other from reading this book, from watching this film, from learning this concept, etc. And maybe this is the time. 

Andrew Adams:

Yep, absolutely. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Now, if what we're talking about is a situation that you're in. You find this video later, whatever. Email me. If you need some support, email me. And then this doesn't just go for this circumstance. This is for everyone. We are not. Sometimes I can't reply to every email, but I still do my best. Jeremy@whistlekick.com. I would love to hear from you. And if you're facing something challenging like this, I might not be able to write you something lengthy back. But I will undoubtedly cheer you on. Because the world needs more people who won't give up. Absolutely. Yep. I couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more?

Andrew Adams:

No, I think that's good.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I want to thank everybody for coming by to watch or listen to this episode. If you want to go deeper, we have transcripts that will take martialartsradio.com. You've also got every other episode we've ever done. If you're someone who exclusively uses a podcast app, there are elements to the show notes that don't show up in podcast apps. You can also sign up for our newsletter, which goes out right now monthly, sometimes it's more frequent. Sometimes it's less frequent, depending on where we are in our business cycles. But we try to include only really good stuff and you can unsubscribe anytime. You don't sell your name. 

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And if you want me to come teach a seminar, your school, I would love to do that. We're almost almost full. Well, it doesn't matter. You might be watching this later. So we're constantly adding dates. I love doing it. Yeah, so until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day.