The Ongoing BJJ Saga II
In October of 2018 (the last post actually) I wrote about my ongoing BJJ saga.
In November of 2018, I managed to make it out to an evening class on a pretty special night. Stripe night! However, this one was one of those fortunate nights in that my gym typically doesn’t do these at this particular time of month.
I got TWO stripes (I had consistently been training for two years at this point as a blue belt). A whole new level of excitement for me. If you practice BJJ, you know that at the lower belts, belts really don’t mean anything about how good you are, but rather how good your coach wants you to be. It seems the real examination of skill and technique happens more at the late purple and early brown stages.
Anyways — I had not felt this type of angst since earning the blue belt. White belts want you, and purples feel like you are after them. It’s a rock and a hard place. Add some stripes to that, now the lower blue belts want you and the purples still torment you, if not harder.
I love this — I love it so much. I had a rough summer where I just felt really stagnant in my training, like I wasn’t going anywhere with improvement. I finally got over that and started to see BJJ differently. I had been viewing it as a struggle (which it is) and as an obstacle pure and simple. It’s not that I didn’t like it, it’s that I couldn’t feel it. It was a mental and even emotional block.
The next week was the week of Thanksgiving. We had a bit of a frost here in Texas that affected some of my landscaping. I got up early on Sunday morning to pull some of those dead plants since we would be entertaining that week for the holiday. My back was really sore after all of that, almost painful. I went to BJJ later that morning and foam-rolled for about 20 minutes just to get loose again. It felt fine after that.
Monday night, I started feeling some sciatic pain in my left leg. No big deal, take a painkiller and let it figure itself out.
Tuesday morning, while brushing my teeth and leaning over the sink my lower back decided to explode. Just like that, I had a herniated disc. I went to rehab that morning to get checked out, and based on responses they ordered an MRI, which I had done later that afternoon.
Wednesday morning, the doctor and I went over the MRI and sure enough there was a pretty good sized herniation. The kind that put surgery on the table.
I spent the next few days in pain, but then something pretty significant happened by Saturday. The pins and needles I felt when I got injured got progressively worse. My leg was inflamed and I basically suffered pretty significant motor loss. Saw a spine specialist pretty quickly the following week because of that, started physical rehabilitation and hoped that the disc would resorb on its own and not require surgery.
December, January, February fly by. While I gained feeling back in my left leg, I still had significant muscle weakness and other indicators that my nerve was still impinged. My doctor and I made a deal that at four months we would operate. So at the end of March, I went in for a micro-discectomy to take pressure of the nerve root. Prior to the surgery, he did one more strength test on my foot to test my ankle strength and as expected, I offered very little fight back.
The surgery was successful, my nerve root was ‘angry’ but had resorbed quite well eliminating the need for a laminectomy. They woke me up, and Doc was at the foot of my bed, and gave me a quick strength test again. The difference in feeling was quite noticeable, I offered actual resistance this time. I would spend the next three months letting everything heal and scar over.
Now, this week I hope to get cleared for rehabilitation so I can start getting some strength back. Four months without being able to stress that muscle group at all, followed by a healing process takes a toll. Slow and steady the process is, but things really pick up once rehab starts I’m told and I am looking forward to it.
Mainly, I’m looking forward to getting back on the mat.
