- Studying Tape / ACL rehab update
Given I’m now month #4 into my rehabilitation from an ACL repair, I’ve been looking at ways to feed my Judo fix. I’m currently watching old fights of mine and am finding them useful to get a better understanding into how I move and react in the competition situation.
Watching Tape
“Back in the day” people used to film with video tape, typically VHS or another variant (BETAmax anyone?). Judo coaches and players would film their rivals to get a greater insight into their gameplans and how to one-up them. It was known as “studying tape” whereas nowadays anyone can just whip out their phone and film a match, or pay a subscription to Judo.TV and get all the matches of any player on the international circuit.
There are some insights from my old fight footage that only the harsh realities of playback can reveal such as:
- I’m not attacking at the beginning when I’m fresh, even if I’ve got a fantastic grip.
- I’m a little too relaxed in my initial approach to the fight. On the plus-side it makes throwing me slightly more challenging as I’m in “wet-blanket mode”. It also means I’m not meeting the aggression head-on and I’m often on the back foot.
- I’m not really gunning for any major throws if I’m really honest, I’m just going for the ground-game. If there’s a throw it’s typically sumi-gaeshi given it’s low-risk and very similar to a butterfly sweep motion for me.
There are some additional benefits with reviewing old, personal fight footage in that a lot of the pre-competition nerves are no longer felt. It wasn’t that long ago that I’d re-watch fights and get all the nerve build-up like I was there again. This desensitisation is just gold, it puts things into the real perspective of the situation, free of ego and feelings of self-preservation.
Refereeing
I’ve now also signed up for to referee at the next competition held at my home club. It’s a kids competition and I’m looking to gain experience in the refereeing sphere and hopefully get a bit more confidence in it.
I’m well aware, two surgeries down, that my competition days may be numbered so I’m looking at other avenues to expand my personal Judo experience..
My refereeing exposure so far has been limited to a one-day course I attended earlier in the year. It was full-on and provided hands-on experience with refereeing a couple of matches. Refereeing is exhausting: to be fair to the players you really have to be completely switched-on and monitoring everything going on. I have developed a new-found appreciation to those that do it on a regular basis.
ACL Recovery Update
As I previously mentioned, I’m 4 months post-op. The physiotherapist has finally moved me off a mind-deadening routine of 4 sessions per week of deadlifts, squats, seated squats, hamstring curls. This leg-centric programme was a joy for some time and I was impressed with what was clearly the largest quad development of my life! By the final week of it though I’d had enough.
The physiotherapist had kept me on this routine because he wanted to see at least an 80% comparitive strength level between my operated and normal leg. All was looking fine apart from a severe pain at the back of my operated knee (where it connects to the hamstring. The pain was high when I’d try single-leg bridges.
Happily this has largely gone away and I’m now doing plyometric based routines every second day. It’s nice to be able to hop again and not dread my knee getting inflamed. It’s also nice to be close to being able to run again too.
My injured knee is still numb at the lower part of the knee and it doesn’t feel completely right. It’s a lot better than it was a month ago so I’m happy with it all.
Damn I miss training. One thing I’ve learned is that I really need to take weeks off my training to give my body more time to recover. I put myself through the ringer far too many times with no breaks. I used to prioritise recovery, but I didn’t emphasis sport abstinence enough!
Previous ramblings..