Rebuilding

[morsla]

I'm becoming louder as I get older. Not that I raise my voice much... my ankles, knees, neck, shoulders and wrists no longer move without making crunching sounds. I don't seem able to move silently any more, as any movement comes with a chorus of creaks. I wonder if there's something I should take for my ligaments and joints - it's possible that my mostly-vego diet is lacking something important, as I seem to need oiling.

I've started riding again, which was a bit of a shock for my knees. For a joint that's designed to have one very specific axis of movement, I have an uncomfortable amount of lateral twisting if I'm not warmed up properly. Kind of painful, and it disrupts my balance. Riding helps to clear my thoughts, though, and I'm enjoying the weather at the moment.

This morning marked the start of the year's Tai Chi classes, breaking a long (apathy-induced) training drought over the summer. Now that I'm working from home, I can practice forms and stances whenever I need a break from painting, without attracting strange looks from co-workers. Score! The long, lazy summer has stripped away any reserves of strength that may have existed last year, so I have a lot of work ahead of me. I'm expecting to take 2-3 intensive weeks getting my basic fitness back up, and then a few months of rebuilding my old forms from the ground up. By mid-year, I should be in shape to start learning something new - hopefully the Wudan Sword form.

There are more synergies between the Wushu and Tai Chi classes than I originally thought. That's unfortunate, as my ankles are unlikely to let me take up Wushu again... I've slowly come to the realisation that my Tai Chi reached a plateau after I stopped cross training with Wushu, and it's never been back up there since. The extra strength and flexibility gives a much longer window for training properly, before the movements become sloppy from tiredness. Plus, the routine of taking 3-4 classes a week helps to keep that physical memory active.

I'm going to experiment a little, isolating the the strength and flexibility training from the regular Wushu classes, and incorporating in into a daily training routine. As with all things, it's a bit of a hack but the end justifies the means...

Comments

[sharplittlteeth.livejournal.com]

Glucosamine, for your joints. Although like most supplements, the medical world is divided.

Plus it usually comes from shellfish, if you're vego.

[morsla.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I'll look into it. I don't have any problems with shellfish or fish, so it could be a good option.

After a quick web search, I don't think I've ever read quite so many ringing product endorsements from "information centre" websites :)

http://www.glucosamine-arthritis.org is run by the company that makes Flexicose - who'd have thought that they rate their own product highest in the Reviews section, or that the site makes no mention of their largest competitor...

[virtual-munkee.livejournal.com]

Mm lots of almonds are good for ya, ur body does need lots of nice oils to keep you lubed up :) :P

I had a few steampunk links for ya babe...
http://steampunkworkshop.com/keyboard.shtml
http://ericpoulton.blogspot.com/search/label/steampunk%20star%20wars

Sounds like things are going well for ya, nice one! I havent done any kungfu forever, but my kickboxing is doing aight. I think I'd be able to spar a LOT better now in Wing Chun, thanks to lots of bagwork and focus mitt training. And my roundhouses have never been better :P

From a fellow crack, snap and pop

[cookie-dreams.livejournal.com]

I hear you on the noisy joints. Mine are like that.
The bad news is, the damage is not completely reversible.
The good news, you can make it quite a bit better.

You probably have overstretched ligaments (hyperflexible joints), which give you movement that you shouldn't have (horizontal movement in the knees, forward movement in the shoulders, upward movement in the elbows, etc).
once your ligaments are stretched out, nothing short of surgery tightens them again (they sort of wind them up, a thought I find distinctly unpleasant to entertain).
So what you need to do is build very specific muscle around all your joints to keep them in place.
More good news? Tai chi and lo ha ba fa are perfect for this sort of strength building, as they are gentle but demanding.

As long as you are very aware of your joints and the ways they twist and turn, you are able to do pretty much anything that doesn't have you snapping or whipping your joints. So if you go back to Wushu, you'll have to slow everything down to the point where you are in full control of your limb extensions at all times.

If you find that apart from creaking, cracking and twisting, you actually have acute pain in the joints, glucosamine is an excellent option, as it removes the inflammation in your gluco-whateverthenameis tissue. It's like a focused, slow-working panadol, basically.

In a primarily veg diet, you are probably missing gelatin, which is what would cause your joints to not pop. You can get gelatin from certain seaweeds, primarily agar-agar. Building up gelatin takes a long time, so you have to keep up your intake over quite some time. But it's your joint lubricant, so you'll want to have it. The cracking is 'just' air bubbles (they're harmless). The creaking and grinding is bone-on-bone action.

From a TCM point of view (which has worked very well for me in the past), avoid all dampening, heavy foods (like nuts, oil, hot food, bananas) and instead favour drying and moving foods (like black sesame, legumes, ginger, berries). That way, you can avoid painful stiffness in the joints.

Oh, and move your legs while you work. No long stretches of sitting cross-legged, tucked under, or with both feet flat on the floor. That makes everything worse...

Re: From a fellow crack, snap and pop

[morsla.livejournal.com]

Yep, I have all of those hyperflexible traits. Overextending shoulders can be handy, but the knees and elbows are painful. I have to watch very carefully whenever I throw a punch, as it's very easy to extend my elbows beyond where they should end up.

I'm moving my legs much more now :) I am guilty of sitting perfectly still for longer than I should... it happens when I start painting, and the rest of the world fades into the background. Getting up regularly to stretch seems to be helping... plus it reminds me to clean my brushes more often than I used to.

I've now embarked on a personal quest to eat all the jelly in the world. If that doesn't help my gelatine intake, at least I'll die happy.

*wanders off to get a bowl of jelly from the fridge*

[futurelegend.livejournal.com]

Glucosamine, chondroitin and.. the other thing. There's a tub of powder you can buy in the supermarket health food tablets section that has all three things in it. Try it for a month or two and see if it helps?