What do you do when you cant train?

[Tigerwarrior]

I stop training and focus on healing. I find that I can recover from an injury much faster by doing this. I've had enough injuries in my life to say that I learned the hard way. It's just better to stop training and heal. Minor injuries however vary. It just depends on what I'm thinking of as minor. In the past there were some things that I thought were minor but turned out to be larger issues. Bruises are minor for me and I'll still train but I won't do contact. Anything else is probably going to be time off.

This is basically what I did. Just heal for like 2 weeks.

 

[Tigerwarrior]

I go to the dojo and watch. I help junior students perform their kata and exercises by watching and instructing them.

Yep that's a great way to stay in the game. When I did jiu-jitsu we had a black belt who got a knee replacement. He couldn't physically train but he would sit in a chair right next to the mat and coach us from the sidelines when we were rolling. He came back just as strong, it was like he never got injured. If anything his top pressure he felt more solid.

 

[Tigerwarrior]

Unless one is confined to a bed, I think MA can still be practiced in some form in most cases (maybe less so for grappling arts). Bad leg? Practice hands. Bad arm? Practice footwork. Other problems? Slow and easy kata. Where there's a will, there's a way. As Bill and Gyakuto noted, teaching, analyzing others and visualization can be most helpful and give further insights. Reading MA subjects, comparing on-line videos and other mental exercises can be done, even if bedridden.

But taking a few weeks off won't hurt any serious practitioner. Getting back into the groove won't take any longer. In the meantime, having your significant other waiting hand on foot on you and baking cookies should be milked for as long as possible. (I think this last one was mentioned somewhere in The Bubishi.)

Yeah I ended up sitting out for 2 weeks. Had some minor tendinitis in my shoulder, that lasted a few days, then bronchitis that's what took me so long to recover. Getting back to training tomorrow.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Say either you sustained a minor injury(what I'm going through right now) or for whatever reason you can't squeeze in even a quick training session. What do you do to stay active and keep your mind active so your skills don't decline?

Me personally I have a few things I do in situations like this. If I injured my upper body I will work my lower body. If I injured lower I'll work upper. If I need to rest to heal I do some virtual training, either watching instructional stuff or studying fights and styles. Even though it's not true, in dragon the bruce lee story when he broke his back and couldn't train he wrote a book on fighting and when he healed up he still had some skill. He kept his mind in the dojo even though he couldn't physically train. In situations like that I think doing things like that are good to keep your fighting mind in shape. So what do you guys do when either injured and can't train or not able to train, what do you do in situations like this as a martial artist?

I've gone through many periods when I couldn't train for a while. Some of the reasons:

• Injuries
• Knee surgery
• Toe surgery
• Lack of funds
• Business travel

Note that some of those don't preclue all training, but my primary style is a grappling art, and there's only so much you can do solo for grappling. In all of these cases, there was still something I could do. Here were some of my answers:

• Find a heavy bag and do whatever I can (even if injured, I could usually do some simple stuff)
• Create some personal forms and run through them to practice movement, balance, or whatever I could manage. In some cases, this meant figuring out a form that required no steps and kept almost all of my weight on one foot - just an exercise to imagine what I could manage if necessary.
• Go watch a class. I learned a lot about teaching and learning by watching others. Sometimes I'd pick up great stuff. Sometimes I'd make a mental note: "Don't ever do that".
• Think and plan. I could plan out what I wanted to train and focus on when I got back, what I wanted to teach (if it was a time I couldn't get to the dojo at all), etc. That kept my head in the game.
• Watch some Youtube videos and learn something there. I'll sometimes just look for a technique I know, to see how another style does it. Or sometimes look for something I know nothing about, and try to understand it (like turning kicks).
• Get some exercise. If I can't train, I can still do something to stay in better shape for the next time I can train.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

View attachment 30647

Hey, what have I said about posting these things without warning me?!

 

[MuayJitsu]

I don’t do anything if I can’t train there’s a reason I can’t train, either I’m sick or I’m busy or I just don’t feel like it. Sometimes you need to just stop and do nothing for a few days

 

[JowGaWolf]

I’ve noted how many people walk around and cough without covering their nose and mouth. Someone, the other day, coughed as they were talking to me, face to face, without breaking their sentence…twice!

Poor parenting….

I watched a guy in the grocery cough everywhere, then he sneezed and I saw him wipe his nose with his hand and then when to the frozen section and pulled open a couple of doors. I won't train in a gym during the day during certain times of the year. Because I know people do things like that. I figure that by the time I get in the gym at night other people would have picked up a significant amount of those germs which mean I have less to deal with.

I don't do the crowded gyms anymore because I know that guys like the one I described work out too.

 

[PhotonGuy]

Say either you sustained a minor injury(what I'm going through right now) or for whatever reason you can't squeeze in even a quick training session. What do you do to stay active and keep your mind active so your skills don't decline?

Me personally I have a few things I do in situations like this. If I injured my upper body I will work my lower body. If I injured lower I'll work upper. If I need to rest to heal I do some virtual training, either watching instructional stuff or studying fights and styles. Even though it's not true, in dragon the bruce lee story when he broke his back and couldn't train he wrote a book on fighting and when he healed up he still had some skill. He kept his mind in the dojo even though he couldn't physically train. In situations like that I think doing things like that are good to keep your fighting mind in shape. So what do you guys do when either injured and can't train or not able to train, what do you do in situations like this as a martial artist?

I basically do what you described, if Im injured and can't train a certain way I will train in another way that Im able to. Same thing with watching instructional videos and so forth when Im resting up. Some arts like Tai Chi you can do which will not totally destroy you and cause you to need to rest up so much.