Hello! Thank you for visiting Happy Grappler, and more specifically, my humble little blog. I've created this blog for a chance to share some of my issues that I've had throughout my BJJ life. Maybe you'll be able to relate, but more importantly, I hope you won't need to :)
The more you train BJJ, the more you fall in love with it, the more you love it, the more you train. When this happens, most likely you’ll find yourself waking up sore every day. You'll find yourself in pain in places you never thought they would, on and off the mats. Back in my 20s, I used to train super hard, through the pain and the injuries, and looking back, this was not such a great idea. Eleven years later, all these past mistakes have added up, and I'm trying to fix all the issues with my 35yo body. Now I’m so much more careful and more sensitive to how my body feels how it reacts.
The nature of BJJ injuries seem to be pretty consistent, but results can vary depending on your body type, how you wrestle etc. While I've torn both my LCL and my MCL on both knees on multiple occasions, I've also been pretty lucky that I've never torn my ACL. I've had neck issues, but I've never had lower back problems. I've got minimal cauliflower ears while my students can get cauli from just staring at their ears for too long. Never assume something won't happen to you.
Before BJJ, I had a total of 2 x-rays for my entire 24 years of life. Since then, I've had more than 10 x-rays and 2 MRIs. I know people who have had even more. This was not only a function of how hard I was training, but also how I treated and came back from injuries. I know it's easy to just tough out injuries because the calling of the mats is so strong, but I missed out on so much mat time, simply because I didn't listen to my body and came back to training too quickly. If your body is in pain, sit out, and observe others. You'll still learn a lot from just watching others wrestle.
Going forwards, I will be inviting some grapplers who also happen to be high level physios, to contribute to this blog, to give you all some insight on how to keep grappling for longer.
Until next time, happy grappling!