I'm curious as to how the older members here (50 and up) have fared with injuries they picked up in their youth and kept training with. I seem to be accumulating injuries over the last few years (I'm 30) and am wondering what if any permanent damage I am doing to myself. Sure, my shoulder/back/wrist etc might only be sore now, but what does that soreness develop into by the time I hit 60?
I guess I fit in that class. Any joint related injuries would come back to haunt you as well as things like knuckle/hand/wrist/grip conditioning. Think of it as consequences of taxing the body. On the good side, I can do many things that most my age cannot
I'm now 51, started 15 years ago or so and joint injuries are emphasized by almost any martial arts. I've had more shoulder and hip injuries than before but you learn to deal with them if you want to stay in the arts.
Funnily enough I have found that now that I am older I have fewer injuries than I did when I was a lad. Perhaps its because I stretch/train more now and I get myself prepared before I get into something so I can take knocks more easily. When I started judo to get ready to play rugby at 50 I hurt alot!!! First year I was sore 6 our of 7 days between matches. In the second year I hurt for 3-4/7 days. This year I find I only hurt for the 1-2 days that everyone else does. Perhaps I have acquired a previously level of flexibility that had been lost and thus I have enough leeway that I don't get hurt so easily. Interestingly I see lots of lads in their early 30's tearing things and getting injured. I notice that many have not done any preparation before they came back to sport and they act like they were still just as capable as when they were 20ish.My biggest problem, in all my training, is that my finger joints get sore and stiff. I believe that this is because my joints are looser than they once were and sprain more easily when gripping up. Judo, sub-wresting and rugby have not done anything exceptional to me in the last 3 years. My stand up style never really gave me too many injuries in the past and does not do so now either. All good fun (but of course I chalk most of this up to my genetics and that I believe is really what is the determining factor :' ) powchoy
Tons of head trauma (as is probably obvious on here) but nothing anyone who knows me would notice ;' ) Funny from rugby I have a black eye every week or two, lots of cuts and bruises and I have popped my AC joint twice and tore my rotator cuff once. All in all nothing out of the ordinary from what I remember when I was a lad... just thing heal slower :'S Interestingly I bet that my opposition would not say the same heh heh powchoy
At 55, the injuries that plague me the most came from alpine skiing accidents in my youth... a couple of leg and ankle fractures, including a nasty spiral fracture of my left tibia and fibula that also involved my ankle. I was in a wheel chair for a month and a cast for a total of five months. Nowadays, they do surgery, screw you back together, and get you into therapy so you avoid the atrophy and other complications of being laid up so long. Oh, then I blew out my ACL, skiing again, in my forties. My dad, who is 85 and heading off to hit some double black diamond runs in Alta next week says I'm just a big weenie. Anyway all that old trauma limits my joint movement and makes my stances pretty funky. But you adapt. I can't put my left heel down in my WT stances, so strangers probably think I'm doing JKD. What do I care? Now my shoulder has been bugging me for a couple of years, but I'm finally back up to three sets of twenty plus full-length pull-ups, and it's not bugging me anymore. Dips and push ups are fine. I even pulled off a set of ten full length phoenix-eye fist push-ups on concrete yesterday. I know, really stupid. But none of the young guys in the group could match me, so "Viva el viejo!" I ain't done yet.
I rekon it was getting kicked in the shins at footy school years thats haunting me , that and a few million other circulation, respitory and genral knackerdness brings seems to be better in summer for me, i hate cold training in the winter , every joint takes so much longer to warm into action, a bit to much distance joggin last year and iv suffered a compressed cartlidge which with all the will and money in the world really needs rest....but hey dont let me put you off doin martial arts until you die its fun
