Pain in the Back

I’m the first to admit, I’m of a melodramatic nature. The refrain of my childhood was my mother saying, “Stop being so dramatic.” So when I reach some physical or mental barrier in kung fu I really do try to reign in the grimaces and groans and involuntary gesticulations of frustration, pain and exhaustion. Everyone is tired. Everyone has pain. Everyone makes mistakes.

This is what my intellect is telling me. But my emotional reactions are, as I said, involuntary, and so controlling them can be difficult. Half of the time I don’t even realize that I am doing X melodramatic thing. Still, I don’t want to look like I am trying to prove something or enlist sympathy through my expostulating, so I am trying to learn to identify and control it. I don’t want to be making excuses even if they are subconscious scowls of pain.

That being said, where’s the line from mind over matter, and when is it ok to say, “I’m hurt.”? Saturday and then last night, Xu and the Sifu both asked me if I was all right. Going to show that however much I might try, my lower back pain has reached the un-hide-able point. I don’t want to be macho and deny that I am in pain. But I don’t want to be a pansy about making excuses. My penchant for melodrama can easily lead into whining and self-indulgence. My back hurts. But it isn’t so severe I shouldn’t be able to train. And if I make the choice to train then I should train. I shouldn’t be half-assing it.

There’s always going to be something bothering me; that’s part of the cycle of building muscles and flexibility. If I’m soreness and pain free I probably haven’t been training very hard. If I am unable to push through my aches without drawing attention to myself, then I need to acknowledge the weakness in my mind or body.

Sometimes I expect too much of myself. But I can’t stand knowing that I could have trained harder but I was being lazy or scared or weak-willed. Or melodramatic. Last night, the pain was not hindering me so much as a mental incapability of pushing through. I got really frustrated and trained worse than my two week back saga warranted. And that got me more frustrated and I was really struggling just to focus on the task at hand. And when a clock is mental and not physical, that makes me feel even more frustrated because the only thing tripping me up is me. Notice the recurrence of “frustration.” It took all my energy to control the melodramatic outburst that was violently bubbling under the surface. I don’t WANT to be irrational. And I recognize when I’m doing it and still can’t seem to flatten my heart.

Tonight I am skipping training to go get acupuncture which I am hoping will benefit both my physical pain and my mental build up. Because more than pain, I am tired of psychoanalyzing myself; I just want to train.

Roller Coaster Chi

Last night was one of the most difficult classes I've had training. Not because of Heng N'ou who was teaching or the hot and humid air. It's this unbearable pain and pure frustration.

After each of the jump, I almost broke down in tears.

I guess it's time I admit my limitation.

I started hurting my right knee over a year ago. And just recently I felt myself stronger. I was able to stop using knee braces and go through classes without pain. I felt chi through the roof and I could train as much as I wanted!

But it came back - the pain - with vengeance. This time it moved to my left knee. What did I do? What should I do now? I want to keep training because it's one of a few things I have that keep me sane. But this pain and frustration is driving me even crazier. This is no-win.

I guess I'll just go insane for a few weeks until my knees heal then.

Training mini marathon

I'm taking the day off. My ass hurts. My back hurts. My hips, hamstrings, quads, knees, ankles, shins, feet, and calves hurt. Basically my everything hurts. Yesterday was my 7th day of training in a row. I was determined to get a whole week done, even though really it's as arbitrary a number as any. But I wanted to say I had done it, even if it meant it would hurt. I just wanted to train hard as I could. I always said I wished I could train every day and now is my opportunity. It was sort of like an extended version of class and far as the mental and physical pushing of myself. And it definitely helped reveal things to me about why and how I train.

I spent a large part of the week getting to class early and working on my left handed ceshoufans for a new move I learned in Level 2. As we all know it is not my strong side. I spent over an hour in L2 on Friday doing cartwheels over and over and over again and still not getting it. I know what to do; I know not to be scared; but my body is just retarded and won't obey me. I really started to get angry at one point. It's so frustrating to not be able to do something so basic even after spending half the class doing nothing else. I tried to focus my anger into chi but I just got worse.

I am terrible about getting really angry at myself when I mess something up. In kung fu this hasn't been as bad because the mental training has helped me mature beyond internal tantrums, (mostly), but there were several times this week when I was learning something new, or even going back to something I already know when I just got so frustrated I wanted to hit something. It was somewhere around my 500th ceshoufan that I realized that this anger was actually holding me back. I couldn't "use" that anger to train better because I was just going into the whole thing with the wrong attitude. It was weighing me down. After all, I didn't decide to train every day because I wanted to be angry at myself for not being perfect at things. I trained because it's fun to work at getting better. I guess this is a fairly straightforward revelation, but I had always operated under the understanding that you could focus anger or frustration as energy in what you were doing. But for me at least, I realized it was just making me worse, and that what I actually had to do was let it go entirely.

Once I started to focus on having fun and being happy that I was learning I already felt lighter. My ceshoufans improved dramatically in how they felt and even some in how they look. :) Of course, I got to the point (today that is) where what I really needed to make things better is a little rest. But it was good to remember that training harder does not mean you have to take yourself too seriously. However, I seriously am enjoying resting my legs. :)