26 September 2014
Hand injury & chibata
I have had an injury free summer – my hip hardly hurts when I run these days, my knees are strong, my right shoulder has been fixed since the injection. In fact, since I started T25 I have been feeling noticeably stronger! Even my legs feel sturdier.
So we have been practicing chibata – which I could more or less do, but the aim here is to do it slowly and in a confined space, i.e. without moving from your spot, which is hard!
This is one of the moves I never thought I’d be able to do at my age! And this is what it looks like, by Mestre Poncianinho:
The hardest bit isn’t the getting there, it’s the coming back. Instead of landing into negativa, the idea is to retrace the move backwards. That’s the bit I’m still struggling with, more on one side than the other.
So, while we were practicing these two moves I somehow managed to get my hand kicked, more precisely my ring finger, left hand. I had just finished doing the moves and was walking back to my line, when a woman went off to do hers and my hand got kicked. Oh, how it hurt. I asked some poor passerby to pull my finger out, as I could tell it was jarred. But later on I read about it and it really makes no difference doing that, waste of time. I also knew the first and most important thing to do is to put ice on it, but for some reason I forgot. So I carried on training, for another 10 minutes, then I told Mestre about it. He got me an ice pack. I wouldn’t have known who to ask, but now I do if it happens again. The woman in reception, who says she knows a lot of people in Made in Chelsea 😀
I iced it for a good 20 minutes – by the way, never ice an injury for more than that as you can get frostbite and it won’t help heal any faster. I then drove home and that was agony, because the movement that has suffered the most is the grip. Gripping hurts and I have no strength on the hand to do it. I can still do handstands and negativa. But I can’t hold a pandeiro, or a berimbau. Or grip the car wheel properly, or change gears without it hurting…
So, I have been icing (RICE) this for over a day now, but today is even more swollen than it was yesterday. Luckily I can type ok, although it does hurt a bit when I do it. I can only imagine how much more swollen my hand would have been without the ice! I took painkillers – ibuprofen – orally for first day, but as of today I’m using Voltarol topically.