Limited Duty Training

Frequently in Martial Arts there comes a time when you have an injury.  It may be that your injury wasn't even specifically related to the art itself.  I have had students over the years who have had neck injuries, back injuries, ankle injuries, and with Tony around occasionally some get their feelings hurt,  (couldn't resist).  Most injuries have NOT been due to the training that took place in the dojo.  In these situations quite frequently the student disappears for a while.  They claim they can't train.  To this I say, reread my post on the SubtleArt of Practice.  

Now, a lot of people will readily admit that my brain doesn't work the way normal brains work, which might be good or bad.  The first thing I did any time my body was injured was not think about how long before I could enter the dojo again.  I thought about what I could do at the dojo.  I remember in my early days of training with a wrist injury, I still went to the dojo and sat down in voyeur mode.  I continued to learn.  When I injured my back training back around '98 I would still go to both of Taika's classes and sit on the bench.  Taika and others would call me Sukwatti Bushi and joke about it, but I came and watched.  If there was one thing I learned about Taika's classes, it was you couldn't miss very many without getting left behind.  If you missed a single class you would come back and think you were in a different dojo, Taika moved that quick with the evolution of his art.  So while injured, I would still attend and sit on the bench.  If they were going through Shiho Happo no Te I would do the hand motions, if they were pairing up I would play with my imaginary friend.  And Notes!  I wrote a lot of notes.  Over the years I took a lot of notes, I have numerous hardbound notebooks on things I saw.  And as others in the class were overwhelmed with so much knowledge (as Taika regularly did to us) I was free on the bench to take plenty of notes, draw pictures, sketch and analyze.  I'm about an 8th Kyu in doodling...  

Luckily, I've gone through about a 1/4 century of training with few bench warming injuries, but with each I've opened a door to other learning.  Sitting on the bench gives you time to think, a different perspective, and plenty of times to work on a weakness.  As I sat on the bench a few times, I would refine my hands and arms since my back was killing me.  In an instance where my wrist was damaged I did a lot of footwork.  Taika always said, to get better you have to take a tiny part of what you are doing and analyze it, practice it, break it down.  Like kata; practicing an entire kata start to finish once you have the basic skeleton won't help you grow.  It is taking the tiny pieces and polishing them, tweaking them, fixing them, etc.  

What better time to break down bits than when you have bits that are broken.