Injuries « Grapplearts Blog

Archive for the ‘Injuries’ Category

BJJ Wrist Injuries and My Guilty Conscience

Friday, November 13th, 2009

A bunch of people have recently emailed me, basically asking if I’m still alive. I haven’t been sending out my normal volume of grappling tips and beginner lessons recently, and they want to know why!

You see, I’ve been working like mad on the Online Grappling Concepts course that I’m delivering at my new site, Grapplearts.tv. I’m really enjoying creating those lessons, but it takes a lot of time to write, film, edit and encode each weekly lesson. And the 15 to 25 page PDFs that accompanies each weekly lesson. And the occasional bonus video.

Anyway, that’s the reason I haven’t been posting quite as much recently. Thought you might want to know why!

But I HAVEN’T completely forgotten about you. That’s why I want to talk about an easy way to prevent injury.

This tip comes from my heart, because I learned this lesson first hand when I injured my first BJJ teacher (and friend) Pshemek Drabchinsky.

Once upon a time we were grappling. I was on top and things seemed to be going well (this was unusual at the time because he was way more skilled than I). However on this day I almost had him pinned! Pshemek is one of those Daddy Long Legs kind of grapplers, and he was trying to put me back into his guard using his long, flexible and agile legs.

He was pushing on my hip with his hand to make enough room to bring his legs into play.

To thwart his defense I twisted my hips: this is one good option, because changing the angle of your body this way often collapses your opponent’s arms.

Unfortunately this time I did it a little to abruptly and a little too fast.

The bottom man is stiff arming my hips
(over-exaggerated for clarity)…

…so I twist my hips to collapse his defense

There was pop!

And he gasped in pain.

His fingers had got caught on my body and when I twisted my hips he couldn’t get his hand out in time. In effect I had applied a hard, uncontrolled wristlock on my training partner without meaning to do so. His wrist took more than a year to heal completely, and I felt bad about it the whole time.

There are eight small bones, and a lot of ligaments and nerves in the wrist. Unfortunately if something is broken in there, then the fractures is often missed by a non-specialist looking at an X ray. (So if you or someone you know severely injures the wrist, or if a nagging wrist injury just won’t heal, then get hand specialist to take a look at you, and not just the regular ER doc…).

Anyway, I don’t mean to scare you you, but I hope I’ve made my point that wrist injuries are not to be taken lightly.

If someone is pushing your body then go ahead and use the body twist to neutralize his arms. Just don’t do it super-abruptly and with a lot of weight on his hands.

And if you’re pushing from the bottom then be aware of the dangers. Be aware of the angles and positioning of your wrists and hands, and be ready to collapse your arms in before you get inadvertently wristlocked. Better to live and fight another day from the bottom of sidemount than have your training cut short by a hyperextended wrist.

Train safe, because as BJJ black belt David Meyer says, “Injury is the enemy!”

Posted in Injuries, positions | No Comments »

Bring ‘Em Back Alive: More On Recovering From Chokes

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

The last blog post (Choke Recovery in Grappling) prompted some lively discussion and debate when I posted it on the Sherdog Grappling Forum and on MMA.tv. I also received a number of emails on the topic.

The most common question by far, was “what about lifting the unconscious person’s legs up into the air to bring blood into their brain.”

I’ve have seen the legs-in-the-air technique used to resuscitate unconscious grapplers. In fact, it’s even been used on me (I was 12 years old and got knocked out by a Judo throw in the adult class. I awoke with my legs in the air and a whole bunch of very concerned faces looking down at me)!

But I didn’t talk about it in my last newsletter for a simple reason – I’ve never seen any sort of research about the safety or efficacy of this resuscitation technique.

It seems fairly obvious that it ‘should’ bring more blood to the brain, and that it ‘should’ help people wake up faster. But that kind of thinking can be dangerous. Medical history is littered with techniques, procedures and drugs that ‘should’ have helped people, but instead caused grievous bodily harm.

A forum participant called “BJJ Medic” finally helped me out. He told me about some research on the so-called Trendelenburg postion. This head down, legs up position was used during and after World War 1 to help manage shock.

Recent research, however, indicates that this position does nothing to help with shock, and increases the risk of choking on your own tongue (which is, by the way, the most common cause for blocked airways in unconscious people). Click here to read The Myth of the Trendelenburg Position for yourself.

So until someone actually does proper research on the legs-in-the-air position, specifically with regard to waking up unconscious people, I’m NOT going to use it. The ‘treatment’ at this point only has risks, and no proven benefits.

BUT I SHOULD HAVE MENTIONED THIS

If someone is unconscious from a choke you should check to see if they’re breathing. If they’re not breathing, then either move them to the recovery position (3/4 prone) OR start rescue breathing. You should also check for a pulse, and if they don’t have one, start CPR.

I think that every serious grappler or martial artist should have basic CPR and first aid training.

But even if you don’t have the training to do rescue breathing and CPR, it’s very important to be able to tell the 911 dispatcher “my buddy is unconscious but has a pulse and is breathing”.

Posted in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Injuries, chokes | No Comments »

Choke Recovery in BJJ and Submission Grappling

Monday, July 27th, 2009

The first time I saw someone choked unconscious it scared the crap out of me. And it was made worse by the fact that it was a friend of mine…

It was many years ago at a local tournament. My friend was winning his match but got caught in a sneaky gi choke. He was (and still is) a stubborn bastard, so he refused to tap and passed out. He might have been out for about 10 seconds before anyone realized what was going on.

When the referee finally separated the two competitors, I could see my buddy lying flat on his back and he wasn’t moving. From my position in the stands I couldn’t even see if he was breathing.

But then it got even worse…

He started to snore REALLY loudly. We’re talking horrible-keep-you-awake-from-the-next-room-sleep-apnea kind of snoring. Everyone at the tournament could hear it. Then, just to make things even more dramatic, he started convulsing a little bit, like he was having a small epileptic seizure.

Finally – to my infinite relief – he woke up, sat up and looked around sheepishly. Objectively he’d probably only been out for a total of 15 to 20 seconds (including the snoring and convulsing) but it sure seemed a lot longer than that to me at the time!

In fact this is a fairly normal sequence for someone who has been choked out. The snoring is normal. The mini-convulsions are to be expected. And they’re going to be a bit light headed when they wake up.

Judo and BJJ coaches have different opions about what to do if someone gets choked out. The most common approach is to stand around and wait for the person to wake up. And this works just fine 99% of the time.

There are traditional judo resuscitation techniques (known as “kappo“). Kappo is an esoteric subject, and I don’t know much about it. But I’ll give you some guidance coming more from a western first aid point of view.

In first aid class I’ve been taught to roll unconscious people onto their side or into the 3/4 prone position (IMPORTANT: you only do this if you’re sure that there’s no neck or back injury). Being on the side helps drain fluids from the mouth and prevents the tongue from blocking the airway. And there are some Judo coaches who agree that this is a good idea.

I don’t want to scare you with all this talk about unconscious people. Most accounts of chokes gone bad involve cops trying to restrain someone high on PCP by squeezing their neck with a billy club. Hopefully that’s not happening at your club.

In fact, chokes and strangles are fairly safe.

The Kodokan, which is the central organizing body for Judo, has conducted studies on the safety of chokes (“shimewaza”). The results are encouraging: Judoka have been choking each other for more than 100 years without any reported fatalities.

Attacking the neck is part of submission grappling and BJJ. If you do this sport long enough then eventually someone will get choked out right in front of you. Now you know what to expect when that happens!

Posted in Injuries, choke recovery, chokes, judo | No Comments »

Emergency Rx for Cranked Necks and Strained Backs

Friday, March 27th, 2009

Yesterday I was training my side mount escapes. My partner and I repeatedly started with me pinned, and then we worked until I got out or until someone tapped.

Well I got sloppy and ended up on the receiving end of this rather horrendous armlock/choke/neck crank technique that’s one of Marcus Soares’s signature moves.

So there I was, getting squished. I was in pain, but pride kept me from tapping out (which, is, of course the wrong thing to do). I squirmed this way and that, trying to find a way out.

I ended up escaping by the skin of my teeth. I literally had to I ‘walk’ his leg off of my face using my face muscles, alternately contorting my face into a frown, then a manic smile. Frown. Smile. Frown. Smile. Frown. Smile…

Fortunately the combination of luck, determination and desperation eventually paid off and I was out of the submission and out from under side mount.

Not surprisingly, though, my neck was pretty sore that evening. A bad kind of sore. That oh-boy-I’ve-done-it-again kind of sore.

That was yesterday. And today my neck is almost 100% again. So what did I do?

Nowadays almost everybody knows about using the R.I.C.E. formula to deal with sprains, strains, pulls or tears. This 4 step process consists of:

R = Rest (i.e. don’t make it any worse)
I = Ice (10 minutes on, 10 minutes off)
C = Compression (a not-too-tight ACE bandage, for example)
E = Elevation (lifting the injured body part above the level of the heart)

When it comes to neck and back injuries you’re kind of limited though – compression and elevation don’t apply.

You really don’t want to be found unconscious with some sort of band wrapped around your neck – the optics just aren’t good (honest mom, I hurt my neck…). And with regards to elevation it’s hard to elevate your neck above your heart more than it already is.

This leaves us with steps one and two: rest and ice. It’s funny: almost everyone will ice a sore elbow, but very few people apply ice to a sore neck. This is a mistake.

That evening I put a gel ice pack into a sleeve and tied it around my neck, 10 minutes on and 10 minutes off, all evening. The 10/10 rule is important, because it’s easily possible to give yourself frostbite by leaving ice or ice packs on too long.

I even ran an errand with that neoprene sleeve around my neck. Yes, I got some funny looks, but I’m 100% certain that the early and aggressive icing had a lot to do with my quick recovery.

The other tool in the R.I.C.E. formula for sore necks and backs is rest. Notice that it does NOT say ‘stretch’. If you’ve recently strained your neck or back then DO NOT STRETCH IT.

When you strain a muscle it’s typically been slightly torn or damaged. The pain and stiffness is a way for the muscle to protect itself. When you stretch it too early, you’re just aggravating it further.

The worst back pain I ever had is when I came home from work with a very sore lower back and tried to stretch it out. At the end of that (gentle) stretching session I was so seized up that I couldn’t get up off the ground. I lay in the same spot on the floor for 24 hours, wondering if I would ever walk again.

It’s usually OK to start gentle stretching AFTER the inflammation has gone down – typically 3 to 4 days in the case of a mild strain or sprain.

So to summarize: if you strain your back or neck, DO get ice on it right away, but DON’T try to stretch it out.

Posted in Injuries, chokes | No Comments »

Hernia Recovery and Prevention for Grapplers

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

A few weeks ago I wrote about getting an inguinal hernia on New Year’s Day and my subsequent surgery.

(For those of you who don’t know, this type of hernia is when your intestines start protruding through a weakness or tear in your abdominal wall and show up as a bulge on the outside of your belly. These hernias may become strangulated, painful and infected, and if untreated might even kill you!)

First of all, thank you very much to all those who got in touch with wishes of a speedy and complete recovery. I’m happy to say that I’m doing great – I’ve even had a couple of light sparring sessions which was a ton of fun after 6 weeks away from the mats!

I’ve also received some emails with questions about hernias. To my knowledge this subject has never been addressed in the context of BJJ or submission grappling. So long as everybody understands that I AM NOT A DOCTOR I’ll take a stab at answering some of these questions:

————————————————–

Q: How long does it take to recover from hernia surgery and get back to BJJ and grappling?

A: Well, predictably the answer is “it depends.” As far as I can figure out, it depends on a number of factors, including

what type of hernia you have (inguinal, femoral, umbilical, etc.) and how bad it is,
what type of surgery you had to repair it (synthetic mesh, internal stitches, etc.),
what your fitness level was prior to the injury,
whether there were any complications during or after surgery (hemorrhage, infection, etc.)
etc.

And sometimes you get conflicting information. For example, when I checked out of the hospital a nurse handed me a pamphlet with instructions not to lift more than 10 pounds for 4 to 6 weeks!

I was very surprised, therefore, when I visited the surgeon for a followup visit and told me that I could get back to FULL activity even though only 2 weeks had gone by since the surgery. He said that the 4 to 6 week rest period recommended by the pamphet was based on old surgical techniques.

So the bottom line is that recovery times seem to be getting a lot shorter (especially for mesh-based surgeries), but YOU REALLY NEED TO TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR OR SURGEON before getting back to training of any kind!

————————————————–

Q: What was your post-surgery workout and rehab schedule like?

A: Here’s my rough schedule so far:

For the first two weeks after surgery I did absolutely NOTHING.
After two weeks I got the OK to ‘get back to everything’ from my surgeon. Frankly this sounded a bit over-optimistic, and I decided on a gradual back-to-grappling program.
For the next week I only did light bodyweight exercises and light BJJ technique drilling with a considerate partner.
Then I did a week of light circuit training with weights (i.e. no heavy squats or deadlifts) and continued with the light partner drilling
A month post-surgery I’m in a phase of doing slightly heavier weight training (still no squatting with more than 245 lbs though), a bit of running, and some easy sparring with people at least 10 lbs lighter than me

As I’ve said before, I’m determined NOT to get re-injured (or get a different injury) during this post-surgery comeback, so I’m actually being pretty disciplined about not doing too much, too soon.

————————————————–

Q: If a fit guy like you can get a hernia, what about the rest of us? How can we prevent hernias?

A: Well there are a lot of different types of hernias. As I understand it, prevention depends on the exact type of hernia that you’re talking about.

I had what is known as a direct inguinal hernia, which has a strong genetic component. A family history of this condition means that you’re more likely to get it too (and, in fact, my Dad had a hernia surgery a couple of years ago).

It’s clear that picking the right parents is probably the best way to avoid these types of hernias.

On the other hand, some other types of hernias are more related to excessive body weight and/or lack of muscle tone. Staying fit, avoiding obesity and keeping your abdominal wall strong through exercise is probably your best bet to avoid these types of ‘lifestyle’ hernias.

I’m just so very very glad that I had the mostly-genetic type of hernia, because of the saving face factor. I know I’d never live it down if I’d come down with an optional lifestyle hernia….

Posted in Injuries | No Comments »

Coming Back from a Training Layoff

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Coming back to training after a layoff is a tricky thing. There is a real danger that you jump back into full intensity training and re-injure yourself right off the bat (especially if you’ve been gone for a while and/or are coming back from an injury).

No, you need to ease back into training. Give your body some time to ‘remember’ what it used to do and ramp up your intensity slowly.

I actually have some authority to dispense advice here, because I’m coming back from a training layoff myself.

Three months ago, in November, I was working like crazy on some new grappling instructional products. Filming, producing, editing, writing and quality control took up almost all my time. I trained, but not very much.

Two months ago I injured my chest. This interfered with most aspects of my training, and so I was only on the mats once or twice a week in December.

One and a half months ago – on New Year’s Day no less – I was shocked to find out that I had a hernia (a direct inguinal hernia, to be precise). It didn’t hurt, but I really didn’t want to make it worse, and so I stopped ALL training and ALL conditioning until my surgery.

Three weeks ago I had surgery, during which they lined my abdominal wall with a prolene mesh. The recovery has gone well, and I’ve just been cleared to get back to strenuous physical actiivity

So I didn’t train much for a couple of months, and then not at all for the last 6 weeks. I’m recovering from two injuries and one surgery. Should I just jump back into class and start training, hell bent for leather?

Obviously not.

I really, really want to get back to training, but I’ll have to make haste slowly. It would really suck to have my repaired hernia explode again (or to injure myself somewhere else).

My back-to-the-mats program has consisted of two things so far:

Easy bodyweight exercises: pushups, pullups, squats, shrimping, hip heists, etc. Nothing too strenuous and certainly nothing to failure.
Non-competitive partner flow drills for repetition of basic grappling techniques. And I’m only using sane, in-control, and relatively light partners for this drilling.

I feel like a bit of a wimp going so light and easy, but there are three things I’m trying to do with this program. I’m trying to:

Get my body used to the physical strain of exercising again.
To recover a bit of timing and help my body to remember how to move like a grappler.
To test things out in a nice controlled environment. If either injury flares up again, I want that to happen in a controlled setting, and not with some bozo doing a flying knee-on-belly technique on me in sparring.

In another couple of days I’ll start with some (light) sparring. And here I’m going to pick and choose my partners very carefully: lighter guys with self control only, thank you very much.

For once I’m taking my own advice, and it feels weird!

Posted in Injuries, drills, overtraining, training | No Comments »

Off to the Glue Factory?

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

Here’s a question I received recently:

Q: “I’m 56 years old and in pretty good health except for a few old injuries. My question is whether it is it too late for me to start training in grappling without wrecking my body too badly? (I’m not interested in competition).“

A: I’ve actually addressed this topic quite often in the past few years (maybe that’s because I’m turning 40 this summer).

In any case, my answer is a guarded ‘Yes.’ You can definitely start training and make progress, BUT it depends on a few critical factors:

You HAVE to be careful
You HAVE to go slow when you spar, and be ready to tap out when you get caught in submissions (or even awkward positions).
You HAVE to watch out for overtraining (also known as under-recovery)
You probably SHOULDN’T train at a school with a lot of young studs who all want to fight in the UFC
You might want to consider taking BJJ, not submission grappling. There is often a lot of testosterone and explosive movement in submission grappling, which tends to lead to worse injuries than the more controlled and methodical sparring in BJJ.

And here is some more reading that you might want to do before you start:

To balance all this out, keep in mind that you’re still younger than my teacher (and inspiration) Dan Inosanto when he started Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And now he’s a very respectable BJJ black belt…

Good Luck!

Posted in Injuries, older grapplers, overtraining, teachers, training | No Comments »

Catch and Release

Saturday, October 18th, 2008

Back when I was mostly training in Judo I heard that there were some traditional dojos in Japan where tapping out to a choke was frowned upon – even in club sparring sessions you were supposed to fight the choke right to the bitter end, and your opponent would release the hold only AFTER you passed out. I thought that this was pretty hardcore, and felt lucky that the Judo club I trained at wasn’t like that.

Towards the end of my Judo career, however, I came across something even more bizarre. A Jpanese collegiate Judo team on a North American tour came and trained at my club. Not only did these guys not tap out to chokes, they didn’t tap out to jointlocks either, at least until something in the joint had popped a few times. This was in PRACTICE, not competition. The irony is that most of these guys actually weren’t very good on the ground, and at the end of a training session a whole bunch of them would be sitting against the wall, nursing sore elbows.

I recently told this story to my BJJ coach, Marcus Soares. After he finished laughing and shaking his head, he told me that back in Brazil he’d done the exact opposite. If he had a submission locked in, and he was sure that could finish it, then he’d often stop that attack, release the grips and go on to hunt for another submission elsewhere.

Perhaps not coincidentally I’ve seen video of Marcelo Garcia, the best pound for pound grappler in the world, using this same ‘Catch and Release’ method in his training. By loosening up your submissions before they are finalized you can study your opponent’s reactions and escape motions, and then work countering his counters to your initial attack.

This intelligent approach to training sure beats the meathead approach of putting your training partner out of commission for a few months until his arm heals up…

Finally, as I talked about in a previous tip, some submissions are just inherently more dangerous than others. Knowing how to train dangerous submissions is important: if you never, ever use them in sparring then you may develop a myopia towards them. Now you might not even recognize when people are setting them up on you, or know what to do if you’re caught in one. Sometimes people even apply these submissions accidentally: they might not realize that a choke has turned into a neck crank, for example. Knowing a little bit about how to intentionally apply a neck crank will help you be aware of when you are doing them unintentionally, and also teach you how to defend against them better.

These were all considerations I had to weigh as I was writing the script for my High Percentage Leglocks DVD. I knew I wanted to show some safer yet still highly efficient material on that DVD, but I was concerned about revealing too much about the heel hook, on the off chance that someone would injure their training partner. In the end I decided that I would be doing a disservice to the grappling community by not showing the heel hook, and included a lot of different methods to train these efficient and effective submissions safely.

For a more detailed discussion of how NOT to blow out your training partner’s knee while leglocking him I would like to refer you to the High Percentage Leglocks DVD itself.

So be like a fisherman, and occasionally practice Catch and Release!

Posted in Injuries, training | No Comments »

The Two Meanings of the Tap

Saturday, October 4th, 2008

Tapping out is sending a message to your opponent. The most common message is “OK, you got me with that submission. Now let me go”

Many grapplers don’t realize that tapping out can also be used to send a different message, namely: “I don’t know what’s going on here – I might be in danger of getting injured, so let’s stop for a second”

Recently I was sparring and had my opponent pinned in side mount. He wrapped my head at an awkward angle and bridged. To relieve pressure on my neck I decided to go with the it and roll to the bottom. Halfway during that roll we collided with some punching bags at the edge of the mat – I was now wedged into a corner, my neck at a strange angle, and my partner perched precariously on top of me.

It wasn’t a submission per se – my neck didn’t actually hurt – but I sure as hell didn’t want to find out what would happen if either he or I tried to scramble from that position. I tapped out, he let go, and -for once – nothing went snap or pop.

As you become more experienced your knowledge of technique grows – that is a no-brainer. A less appreciated aspect of the grappling learning process is that your mental library of awkward positions also grows as you spend more time on the mats. You’ll figure out when certain positions are merely uncomfortable, vs. actually being damaging. You might be willing to accept the discomfort of a guillotine choke for longer, because you’ll know if it is going to damage your neck or your windpipe.

Even when you get to black belt level, however, you’re still going to periodically end up in weird, contorted positions that might be uncomfortable but not be submissions per se. My advice is, that if you are unsure about the safety of a position, then swallow your pride, tap out and live to fight another day. The worst that will happen is that you will make the day of some junior guy at the club who just tapped out one of the big guns. Not such a big price to pay really, when you compare it to the alternative of not being able to train for many months due to some stupid, preventable injury!

Remember that the tap can be used to send two different messages.

Happy Tapping!

Additional Resources: an article about two things that will put a halt to your training.

Posted in Injuries | No Comments »

Lets Get The Groundrules Straight!

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

One of the worst organized MMA shows I ever saw was a small local show, back in 1996. Before I talk about that particular show though, I have to set the stage: UFC 9 had just happened. That UFC was ‘special’ because at the last minute the rules had been changed to ban punches with the closed fist to the face (more on the event and the backstory here).

Some of the fighters in that UFC ignored the no closed fist rule and merrily punched their opponents in the face (incurring minor financial fines along the road to victory). Other fighters apparently took that rule seriously and only slapped their opponents. Almost of the fans, myself include, were confused by what was going on.

So now let’s get back to that particularly putrid local MMA show.

A friend of mine was coaching one of the fighters, so I was privy to the pre-fight rules meeting. I was interested to see what they would allow at these fights. This was before the athletic commissions got involved in regulating MMA so every event had a different set of rules governing the legality of headbutts, elbow strikes, knees on the ground, wearing of gloves, closed fist punching, etc.

Are you ready for the rules meeting? It was one sentence long: “OK, like it’s total UFC rules“.

That’s it.

After that, the fights themselves were a gong show. Some guys were doing Pancrase-style open hand slapping. Other people were throwing repeat headbutts into their opponent’s faces and trying to punch them in the balls. The referee, the same guy who had delivered the oh-so-concise rules meeting, seemed completely out of his depth as he tried to manage the mayhem.

The climax of the show occurred when one fighter knocked down his opponent near the ring ropes. He then grabbed the bottom rope, stood up and stepped on the neck of his opponent. With the full weight of his body and the tension of the bottom rope pressing down on his opponent’s neck and pinning him there he started stomping his victim on the head.

And the ref did – nothing. He was useless anyhow, but this tactic so stunned him that he stood there and watched.

Finally the victim’s corner stormed into the ring and bull rushed the aggressor off of their fighter. A near riot broke out, and eventually, after much yelling in about 3 different languages, the stomper was disqualified and the stompee, somewhat worse for wear, was declared the winner.

Of course this entire schmozzle was almost entirely the referee’s fault (who was also the organizer and promoter, by the way). If I had been a politician, and this had been my introduction to MMA, I would have knelt down and made a vow that my life’s mission would be the eradication of this brutal bloodsport. Not amateur MMA’s proudest moment…

So what does that have to do with us today? MMA is much more regulated and standardized now, but jiu-jitsu and submission grappling tournaments still use widely varying rules. Some allow suplexing throws, others do not. Some allow certain leglocks, others do not. Some award points when you use the turtle position to reverse an opponent, others do not. Some allow neck cranks, others do not.

Even if you never compete, it’s still worth clarifying the rules when you’re about to spar with someone you’ve never rolled with before. If you’re operating under the assumption that heel hooks are forbidden, but it’s the bread and butter move at that other guy’s home club, then things could go badly in a hurry. No matter whether you compete or not, make bloody clear that you know what the ground rules are; your ACLs will thank you for it.

Posted in Injuries, MMA | No Comments »

Categories

Archives

BJJ Wrist Injuries and My Guilty Conscience

Bring ‘Em Back Alive: More On Recovering From Chokes

Choke Recovery in BJJ and Submission Grappling

Emergency Rx for Cranked Necks and Strained Backs

Hernia Recovery and Prevention for Grapplers

Coming Back from a Training Layoff

Off to the Glue Factory?

Catch and Release

The Two Meanings of the Tap

Lets Get The Groundrules Straight!