Boo boo

Bumps and bruises? A person in Karate can go months without having anything happen at all.

Doing partner work usually comes along with some kind of mark. Arms bang together. Usually nothing hurts, but wee bruises can happen. Sometimes big ones. Free sparring usually involves a few bumps. Normally nothing to worry about.

Jiu-Jitsu is harder on poor, old me. The grinding, the stretching under pressure, the strength against strength. Things bend funny, or too far, and there's always heavy abrasion against the mat.

I have a most interesting dark brown bruise thing on my hand. I have no clue how it happened. It doesn't hurt, and looks rather like a very small localized dark tan.

The toe I broke in the summer can't seem to decide if it wants a toenail or not. It feels fine, but looks a tad strange.

Martial arts people soon get over fear of pain. If you didn't, you wouldn't stay long. The pain is all pretty trivial. Most can't even be realistically described as pain at all. It is more a form of mild discomfort. Pretty wimpy if one quit training due to fear of discomfort.

The biggest problem an injury is likely to cause me would be if it were serious enough to interfere with training.

If my back gets injured, or my neck, or a hip, or a knee and I might be out for a while. I've never had a knee or hip injury. Sometimes my back goes out, but it's never been due to training. My neck sometimes feels fragile, but it's never cost me any training time.

At my age, an injury could mean more time off than a younger person would suffer.

But even so, I'm more likely to be out from flu or a bad cold.