Originally posted by rmcrobertson
When I started at 39 (yikes!), I was taught by an instructor in her forties who'd always had some physical limitations. She was very, very careful about teaching so that I could train for a long time, rather than a few years--and little lessons, like keep your hands lightly closed when you're sparring until at least green belt really seem to've paid off. I try to pass them on, especially to kids I teach--remembering Nick Nolte at the start of "North Dallas Forty." I mean, who wants to be Jackie Chan first thing in the morning? I'll bet it takes an hour and a half just to unkink that guy...
Of course, starting older has the signal advantage of starting after a lot of those wacky hormone levels have dropped to something reasonable.
I'd distinguish between "reasonable," and "unreasonable," injuries. Reasonable? Bruises, lumps, black eyes and fat lips. Those ugly-but-harmless knots you get on your shins when you clash with some other idiot, sparring. An occasional popped finger or toe, maybe an occasional dinged rib.
Unreasonable? Ripped out joints. Concussions from stupid, aggressive roundhouse kicks. Torn-up rotator cuffs because some idiot couldn't be bothered to learn a take-down correctly, with some control. Or the long-term results of having your back stomped by some yahoo who couldn't learn control OR stances for some of the endings, like Dance of Death (reason no. fifteen hundred to learn the damn forms, by the way)--that sort of stuff.
It has been my experience that most scary injuries are caused by stupidity, or lazy training...the single best illustration of thiss I know appears when students WILL NOT keep their hands closed while blocking, especially downward blocks for some reason....saw a guy do Thrusting Salute that way, and when his ring finger broke, it bent back far enough that the skin ripped most of the way around the base of the finger...
I worked in hospitals for some ten years, and I never saw that before...
