Training through my injury...

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Back in December, ending the year I had a knee injury while I was rolling with one of my friends in the Jiu Jitsu Academy. This little accident put me completely off the mats for the whole first half of the year.

I had surgery in February, in which luckily the Doctor decided that I did not need any screws. Still, I was prohibited to do any sport or physical activity for the following 6 months, meaning until August, and just do therapy exercises.

Being away from the sport I love the most is hard, especially psychologically speaking, there is always something missing and for me, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has always been a good stress release and a moment where I can forget about everything in life and just focus on the sport or art itself.

So, I could not do Jiu Jitsu, nor go for a run or jump rope, anything that involves impact. Since I have a small little gym where I live, lifting weights with my brother and @evecab, my wife, was my only alternative, although with @evecab not for long since the pregnancy limited her.

I know that my therapy exercises are important and I depend on that if I want to recover faster, but I have to be honest, those exercises are so boring that I don’t even finish all my sets and some days *or most! I just don’t do it. I know, it’s very stupid and irresponsible (my wife made me type the word irresponsible)...

I am also very realistic about my situation, once the 6 months passed, it does not mean I can go and train as hard as before and combat everyone in the academy at a 100%. First of all, I am not going to keep up due to my lack of conditions but more importantly, my knee won’t be completely ready.

I did some research which also help me arrange some ideas and also have my feet on the ground. In case you want to check it out, here is a really cool video of a famous Jiu Jitsu practitioner, Stephan Kesting, I enjoy reading where he talks about it:

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I had to stop training completely over a month ago, since we had to move to another city for the birth of our newborn, and it has not been easy to adjust a training schedule since he was born. Well, I am pretty sure you understand why... we already forgot how to sleep the entire night. Between my work and our new parenthood journey, training went down in my priorities. Sometimes I see a short window to train a bit but my body demands a power nap instead. But we don’t really care since this is temporary and looking at our son, spending time with him, feeding him, washing him, etc make us feel very happy.

Things are changing slowly, we are trying to find some time to train, not as much as before as you may figure, but we promised each other we can’t spend a whole week without training something.

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Back to the mat no matter what…

Yes, my 6 months of no impact activity is due very soon. So I decided to do something irresponsible but with responsibility, ha, ha, ha!

I thought that I could go to the academy, do some jiu jitsu stretching and some drills, such as animal drills and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu drill movements. It was awesome!

So yesterday, Saturday, there is always open mat at 4PM. Open mats means everyone goes to just roll (combat) with each other for 1 hour or more as much as you can. I thought about going 1 hour earlier to do a complete full hour of drills and maybe, just maybe some flow rolling.

Flow rolling is a way of slowing down BJJ sparring, without affecting the effectiveness of the techniques. On the contrary, it is a great way to enhance them. The whole point of flow rolling is to be as relaxed as possible and not cling to any given move or technique.

Before leaving the house, I remember @evecab saying: “NO rolling!” I said ok since I knew I was not going to roll.... hard. I left to the academy thinking I was going to get in trouble when I come back because I never lie to my wife.

Anyways, arriving at the academy was great. I was already thinking on the way all the drills I could do without hurting myself. This is when you train through your injury, in a responsible way.

After doing all my exercises and drills, some of my friends started to arrive and they were surprised to see me.

The time to roll started, it was already 4 o’clock.

Since everyone knows what flow rolling means but only a few actually remember the meaning while rolling, I previously selected a couple of my friends that I knew were going to flow roll and have fun.

I only rolled 3 times and it was amazing.

Ironically speaking, I noticed that my healthy leg felt weak. I guess it is because I have been exercising with therapy the other bad one. This tells me that I will have to do the same exercises with my good leg. Remember I told you how boring it is? I am not looking forward to it =)

It felt good to have jiu jitsu contact as well as writing this post.

My @evecab is not very happy about my flow rolling decision, I hope after reading this post she will be ok, I must go and buy her a chocolate (I always forget!).

To all my jiu jitsu friends out there, sending you good vibes! You know who you are.

I made a short video of all the drills I did on my session, I hope you like it and thank you for watching!

Ooooss!