After doing jiu-jitsu for 14 years I’ve been injured more times than I’d like to remember.
But even after all that lost time, money spent on treatments, surgeries, and doctors, and months in agonizing pain, I still think the pros of jiu jitsu outweigh the cons.
In fact, I like to remind myself that each one of those injuries was an opportunity. They forced me to improve my understanding of the body, how it works, how to heal it, and how to make it more resilient for the future.
As difficult as they were, they forced progress.
The ancient stoic phrase about the “obstacle is the way” was never more relevant.
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands on the way becomes the way.”
These painful moments force you to choose what kind of person you’ll be – one who suffers, blames others, and quits, or one who accepts, adapts, and overcomes.
The following are the 5 things that allowed me to make progress despite being in chronic pain for months.
1. ISOMETRICS
One of my most valuable takeaways from being hurt was finding isometric training. Looking back, I wish I had found this long before any injury due to their effectiveness for a list of benefits.
But, thankfully, injury led me there.
Isometrics involve contracting maximally against an immovable object. Your muscles actually have the highest ability to contract, or produce force, against an immovable object, which makes them excellent for building strength – injured or not.
The big advantage was being able to train despite almost any dynamic movement throwing me into pain. One lower back injury was so bad that even breathing too hard sent me wincing in pain.
There is zero mechanical movement during isometric exercise, so it’s an easy way to ease back into generating force with your muscles without causing unwanted motion.
You can also focus in on specific muscles without flaring up inflamed areas. So if your shoulder is hurt, contracting your legs isometrically should do no harm.
Isometric Wall Pushes caused my lower back no pain, as did seated Isometric Rows, and even Wall Sits. I was able to build strength and muscle despite my limitations.
Plus, isometrics have a magic way of healing inflamed joints. It was the exact medicine I needed.
Isometrics also led me to Super Slow Training, which is just as effective for building strength and muscle, and allowed me to safely progress to more dynamic movements.
2. WALKING
Depending on the injury, walking might not be available to you, but this one quite literally changed my life.
As fighters, the thought of walking as exercise doesn’t exactly get your adrenaline pumping. I had always instinctively known the benefits of walking, but I always dismissed it for more dynamic forms of cardio like running or biking.
It wasn’t until I was limited only to walking that I discovered its profound benefits.
For months I could do nothing except long walks without going into debilitating pain. What I discovered was that the walks became the only thing that kept me in a positive mental space.
With all of my other movement passions robbed, I was sliding into a serious funk. My options were to lie in bed, where I often slunk further into depression, or walk.
Walking was my only reprieve.
It was the only moments of “joy” I had for months.
I also noticed after a few weeks that I wasn’t getting fat. We’ll talk about diet next, but it’s been proven that walking is one of the best fat burning exercises you can do.
I went for three walks a day, and shot for over 10,000 daily steps.
Walking is now a daily ritual. I do it every morning and after dinner.
It helps me think, burn fat, breathe, catch up on podcasts and music, and just move.
I highly recommend you walk every day, injured or not.
3. NUTRITION
Diet can be a touchy subject with wildly conflicting recommendations. So I won’t go deep here, but just using common sense can go a long way.
When you’re hurt all you want to do is eat junk and find dopamine any way you can, even if it’s just for a moment.
But when you realize that only makes things worse, it’s easier to do the opposite.
When I committed to eating clean, essentially meat and vegetables, I felt better and built momentum toward an optimistic future.
Eating junk will only make you fat, which will make you feel worse about yourself.
Plus, sugar, processed food, and especially alcohol, is pro-inflammatory, limiting the healing process.
My back was so inflamed that I could literally feel things get worse after a few drinks.
That’s when I cut it completely, and committed to eating healthy to heal.
It was extremely difficult, given the pain I was in, but well worth it.
Multiple people commented that I never got fat, and even looked better while hurt, and I attribute this to the clean diet and regular walks.
4. NERVOUS SYSTEM REGULATION
The body has an amazing way of protecting itself when hurt. It will create tension to guard the injury and create stability by itself so things don’t get worse and it can heal.
The problem is that your body also remains in a sympathetic state when injured. Humans don’t shake off threats like Zeebras or Antelope can.
The fear response can remain long after the threat is gone.
The issue becomes when you can’t escape this “fight-or-flight” state, because healing happens in the rest-or-digest, parasympathetic state.
If your body can never relax enough to get there, it will take a long time to fully heal.
I only realized I was still holding a lot of low level protective tension while I was meditating one day. During meditation you tune in to your breath and body on a deeper level.
This newfound awareness was an “a-ha!” moment, that made me realize I needed to dedicate more time to breath work and down regulating my nervous system to finally heal fully.
I committed to daily breathing sessions and meditations to further relax and let go.
It was fascinating to see how quickly I improved after committing to this.
5. MENTALITY
The intro alluded to the “obstacle is the way” mentality you need to assume anytime a hard challenge is thrown into your life.
When you’re in the throws of pain, and nothing is providing relief, even the strongest pain killers, it’s nearly impossible to stay positive…to see a way out.
It’s much easier to look back and find the value of the injury experience when you’re healed and in a better mindset.
But, if injury has taught me anything, it’s that they will heal. Some take much longer than others, but the body is a miraculous thing that has immense self-healing power.
You MUST commit to this belief, and never give up.
Injuries will break you if you let them. They can be the slowest form of torture a person can endure.
But you are never out of the fight unless you choose to stop fighting.
So don’t.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If you’ve never been hurt serious enough to relate to this article then be grateful. But realize, these options are available to you if it does happen one day.
In fact, looking back, any of these options can be applied even if you’re not hurt.
I use and will use much of what I learned while injured to make progress today and onward.
Injuries don’t have to stop your progress completely.
Unless you let them, they’ll merely slow you down, but you’ll come out a better person with the right tools.
Did you pick up any new tools while injured? Let me know here.
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