It finally happened…
After 13 years of training jiu-jitsu, I finally got a staph infection. And go figure, I caught it a little late AND it just so happened to be MRSA.
It’s a special kind of hell watching your body eat away at itself. I’ll spare you the photos but if you use your imagination, it kind of looked like the first page of the Google search.
Now, why do I bring this up? Glad you asked.
Last month I mentioned that occasionally, “shit happens”. There will be plenty of times throughout your jiu-jitsu tenure where you’ll be forced off the mats because of “bad luck”.
If you recall, there was a similar situation I wrote about in last month’s training journal where bad weather and Covid part 3 kept me out of training. When I finally got back (second week of February), I hit my stride and it was more or less all systems go. I was making incredible progress both in lifting and on the mats until finally, the unexpected happened.
I noticed the infection and immediately stayed away from the mats. I canceled my lessons, skipped a great sparring session and booked my doc’s appointment ASAP on Monday when the offices were opened (big mistake; should’ve went to urgent care over the weekend).
I was out over a week until my doc cleared me to resume activity just 2 days before writing this… which is absurd because the hole is still open and I’m still leaking a little.
Needless to say, he said I should be alright if I just keep it covered up and let the Antibiotics continue to do their thing.
Which brings me to my training journal.
At the moment, more important than learning or training or even teaching jiu-jitsu is healing. I’ve said this countless times before: If you’re an injured athlete, your number one job is to recover. And this is what I’m doing.
With that said, my usual questions (block quoted below) will contain different answers for this month, given my recovery from the infection but also, a big adjustment in my training goals given over a week to sit at home and reflect on life and jiu-jitsu.
Number 1: How’s training?
Number 2: What’s working well?
Number 3: What’s working not-so-well?
Number 4: What’s the ONE THING that will move the needle most and let’s start there
Given the change to some of my goals, it’s worth repeating this rationale from the very first training journal email:
Things are always changing and it’s important to A) Have a plan of action that you stick to as well as B) ADAPT because things RARELY go the way you plan them out.
In today’s case, I had a plan of action and I had to adapt because I got derailed mid month.
Let’s get into it!
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