Sunday, September 22, 2013

Injuries and rest


I was planning on getting my 6th workout this week, which would be a record for me since even 5x is a lot for me, but I decided to stay home most of the day to rest.

Two things I've been thinking about with regard to boxing, especially for a 40+ year old boxer like myself.

1) Injuries/Aches

  • I hurt my left forearm/left elbow yesterday during a sparring match. It was during my 4th round of sparring, and I hit my partner with a left hook and I ended up straining it. 
  • I think my arms were pretty tired/worn out when I did 2 really hard rounds of mitts (my hardest ever I think) where I tried popping those mitts every time even though I was really tired. 
  • Then I sparred 2 rounds and was about to go home, when the young lanky guy asked me to spar when I hurt my elbow/forearm. 
  • This is common in boxing to get injuries, and since this is my first one I'm feeling a bit down. I was really excited at how well things were going and how much I was learning, and now this. 
  • I'm hoping that it'll feel better in a few days, I'm really going to take it easy and not even shadow box and try to rest/do as little as possible. 
  • It's not an injury, but my shoulders are really really sore. I can barely lift both my arms over my head without pain, feels like I had an incredible workout with my shoulders - thankfully I feel it in my muscle and not my joints. I realize how much of my left arm I was vs. my right arm, since my left shoulder is not only more sore but my left hand/fingers are more sore as well since I jab a lot more than I do in everything - including mitts, heavy bag, etc. 
My bruised forearm:



2) Rest
  • I normally get 3 days rest since my last workout is on Saturdays typically and my next one is on Tuesday. 
  • I also end up eating one large meal on Sunday and then fasting for at least 24 hours on Monday. This really helps my rest and recuperation. 
  • Another thing, I realized is that as much as possible I have to not push myself very hard. Again, my age makes it harder to recover so I need more time. 
  • Above all, I need more sleep. I'm not getting enough sleep. That's probably the best thing I can do for my body. I have work to do at night so I normally sleep around 12:30am and get up around 7 or so. I'm going to try 
Mostly I want to deal with the psychology of injuries. It's a part of the deal and I hope I can deal with it well. Right now, I'm just itching to go back to the gym. I should have worked on my cardio at least today, but I was too tired for even that. 

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