Well, as the title suggests I was doing my grading for red in Wado Ryu on Saturday and I did a poorly executed block resulting in a fractured ulna. Pooh.
Yeah, forearm bone on the little finger side. Commonly broken in self defence and is known as a night stick fracture as a result of the US Police truncheon breaking several ulna (according to hospital staff that dealt with me).
I had a guy suffer a posterior dislocation of his sterno-clavicular joint (potentially fatal injury) from a hip throw during a grading, he still finished the grading .
It pushes into the fairly essential soft structures of the mediastinum (trachea, oesophagus, vena cava)
Yeah, finished the grading quite painfully and passed. Out of training for a few weeks so can't wear it
When I broke my ulna (one two places) I couldn't rotate my arm anymore. The pain wasn't even that bad, so when being told in the ER that it was broken came as a little surprise. Yet - rotating was out of the question from the moment I heard the knack - how on earth did you manage to finish the grading? Or could you still rotate the arm or didn't need to? (Don't get me wrong. Not saying you're lying! Just wondering, because I was told that not being able to rotate the arm is normal when the ulna is broken)
Not to be a smart butt, however i thought, based on the numerous discussions here and on other karate forums that their are no "blocks" in karate. LOL Just messing with you. Any idea what went wrong? Im guessing a hard block on a kick, minus the appropriate evasion. Id be curious to know. I hope it gets better.
Well one time I had to do a grading after eating a lump of cold poison, working twenty-nine hours a day down't mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work mind, and when I was finished, my sensei killed me and danced about on my grave singing "Hallelujah." I still passed though.
The break happened on the last move thankfully when doing self defense so there were no heroics involved in finishing! I did a side block but twisted my fist round which exposed the ulna to take the force - simple mistake and have definately learnt from it...
Ah, you've been lucky under the circumstances. Still sucks though. I'm so glad - now, three months after I broke my bone and the operation, I'm back into regular training. Luckily with a teacher, who wouldn't allow me to use the arm as an excuse anymore I hope you get well as soon as possible. You'll probably hate giving the arm its time to heal Pain is an awesome teacher, isn't it?
Congrats on your grading and I hope your ulna heals well. Just a question of thought, how many of you actually condition your forearms. I do a little bit. Goju ryu practitioners have forearm conditioning drills. It makes sense since we are using them to deflect hard techniques, we need to condition our arms in order to protect them from injury. Same way you condition your knuckles in order to protect them from fracture when they hit. Lastly, I also do Wado and I was always taught that we don't block, we deflect/redirect. We are doing soft blocks which puts our arms at an acute angle to the hard technique delivered by the uke. Of course i'm not saying all of my blocks are like this, I still need much training.
