05 Oct Show Me Your Karate Spirit
Starting in 2014 or so, the pain in my upper thighs when sitting at work became so bad, I started using a wooden riser under the desk to lift my legs enough to reduce the angle and Pressure (still not sure if there is a connectionvto my current situation, but probably so. No real pain related to karate that I remember — just thought that I needed more stretching which I attributed to getting older.
Then, it started. I was at a clinic in St Louis which was to honor the life of Sensei Randall Hassell who had just passed away. Each of the head instructors took turns leading the group in one-hour sessions. They were all excellent teachers and the training was hard. Half-way through the second session we were working with partners on a relatively basic 3-5 step sparring drill. My partner and I had just finished the first set, then started the second. I stepped forward with a jab-reverse punch and then a sweep with my right leg – down I went. My left leg just caved in and I landed on the floor. Rolling over, I finished with a mawashi-geri (not part of the drill-just to save face!). But for the rest of the day, I could feel that something was not right.
I had been feeling a sharp twinge of pain periodically before that for the last year, usually while kicking. But a little pain now and then in the karate world is not that strange. Then, in 2016, while sparring in the regular class at the Pekin dojo with Sensei Jim Hartman, I feigned a reverse punch and then followed it with a reverse mawashi-geri. My left leg collapsed and down to the floor I went again. This time the pain was so bad I had to skip over to the side of the dojo and try to massage it away. That kick had been my go-to technique for years and was about the only technique that would actually get through the defenses of Hartman Sensei. Several times after that, in the dojo and at the annual Spring and Fall clinics, the same thing happened, usually the support leg on one or the other sides. Then, in early summer of 2016, on a business trip to Idaho, I was walking across the street from my hotel to a restaurant. Exactly in the middle of the road, my right hip locked up and I could not move at all. A very kind older man stopped his car, put on his safety blinkers, got out and helped me to the other side. He offered to take me back to the hotel but by that time I could again move satisfactorily and continued on my way.
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