Smashed fingers

While I'm clearly not a medical expert, but I believe putting deep heat on a nasty bruise is pure insanity. Deep heat is to relax a muscle that is in spasm. It works by causing more blood to accumulate at the site, which in effect is what inflammation is. A bruise is also inflammation. With a bruise, you want the accumulated stagnating blood to disperse from the site, which is why you cool it to contract the fine blood vessels, effectively squashing the blood out and taking pressure off the surrounding tissue. At least that's what I've always been led to believe. Its also why anti-inflammatory drugs are used. They thin the blood so that it can escape from the swollen damaged tissue. The last thing you want is more pressure there, so deep heat is a bad idea. At least that's my understanding.

 

It actually makes sense to me. Deep Heat and similar work as Clueless says by increasing blood flow. Applying to a bruised area will draw the blood from the deep muscle area towards the surface. It may look worse but you really do need to draw the bruise out.
Personally if it is just a bad bruise I would just take a brisk walk and generally keep moving as much as possible.
ps - if you are on Warfarin (spelling) deep heat rubs and sprays are not such a good idea.

Please take the following in the spirit in which it is intended...............
You appear not to be learning the most important lesson of martial arts (in my limited knowledge of the arts) which is self control. There is no such thing as mind over matter - you can block the pain but the injury is still there. Hussain Bolt would not compete with a muscle strain but he would continue with a reduced training regime (in conjunction with targeted physio) .
Now I appreciate that the previous gem of wisdom came from a prat who needs corrective surgery on his hand. The same prat who played rugby with a neck injury with the result of spending a few weeks in traction having broken a vertebrae
Look after your body or end up like me

 

That's nearly right, but...

In martial arts training, you are training the mind more than you are training the body. Sure you train the body very hard, but that's just the pure mechanical stuff you're working on. There is no point at all training the body to be able to do martial arts moves if the mind isn't progressing at all. Mentally, there is the obvious stuff like focus and clarity of mind, reaction speed, awareness of your surroundings etc (we have a game which is like tag, except every man for himself, its very good fun, you have to hit a specific point on anyone's shoulder, but not allow anyone to get you, so you have to focus on your intended target while also being aware of who is approaching you from any direction. Its right good fun). The main thing though is understanding your limits. That sounds obvious, in that you have to understand what you can not do, but less obvious is that you have to understand what you can do. And most people can do a lot more than they initially believe they can. This might manifest itself as a total novice forfeiting a training session because they are nursing an injured thigh muscle, whereas after a time you realise that you can still train, but must shift the weight about or whatever is necessary to work all the other muscles while resting the injured one. I guess that's what I was doing, and I guess that's why the instructor was able to spot that I'd injured my leg.

The old, often misunderstood idea that martial arts is about 'mind over matter' also means that you learn to prioritise your responses to any situation. Remember that while martial arts now is more about sport than combat, its origins are clearly in warfare. The old mind over matter thing is about deciding whether you'd be better off ignoring an injury in order to prevent death, or not. In its historical sense, if you're on the battle field and you've just smashed your hand, in an open hand battle against a man carrying a big stick, you're probably better off ignoring the injury and continuing to fight than you would be asking the enemy to excuse you But of course my class is not war, so mind over matter there means sort of train as hard as you can, ignore the very normal discomfort you sometimes get from tired, aching muscles, but do not ignore anything that feels like or looks like injury or any unusual signals from your body that could indicate you're about to keel over if you try to continue.

People are often inspired by TV/video footage of the like of the Shaolin monks. They see someone smashing a concrete block over their head or suspending themselves on a spear, and think its 100% about some magical power of the mind. They fail to realise that these people have trained 8 hours a day, 7 days a week since they were 3 or 4 years old, or, here's a little secrete You know the blocks that you see martial artists smash? Well they are specially designed to be smashed. Sure it still takes force, but the breeze blocks are not actual real breeze blocks, they are special training blocks with a deliberate weak spot in them. Its not that weak, it still takes a lot of force to break, but no more force than the average human body can take. Of course if you hit any point other than the weak spot, it might as well be a normal concrete block, and the person about to hit it knows this, which is why it is still mind over matter in a way because the person hitting it knows that he/she must use real force, and if they miss the weak spot its going to hurt very, very much, so it takes immense mental focus to overcome that fear of missing the weak spot (which incidentally you can't see, you just have to judge for yourself where the exact centre is) and hurting yourself pretty bad.

 

I've been to the little hospital. I've had my hand examined and x-rayed.

Good news: Nothing is broken or out of place.
Bad news: I've been banned from training for a minimum of two weeks, but in reality that's not a problem, because classes are off until the new year anyway, so my next class back would normally be the 8th of January, so nearly two weeks anyway.

I just have to rest it and use topical anti-inflammatory stuff until its better. I have some ibruprofen gel, which I'll use sometimes, but I like the rosemary oil better.

 

Good news CL
Look after it
Being amphibious, I can use both hands equally as well, which is handy.

 

Great news Clueless Just take it steady.It's not your drinking hand is it?

 

Do you mean ambidextrous? Or are you an ambidextrous amphibian?

Its ok. When it comes to drinking, I'm amphibious.

 

Good news Clueless! I'm glad to hear there's no serious damage. Now it's been checked out you and we can stop worrying about any permanent damage. And......you will behave yourself and do as your told for at least the next fortnight, that's an order!

 

I'll try.

I have a plan. I will return to training on schedule, but I will not take my battle pads (gloves, foot pads and head guard). This means I will be forbidden from sparring. Its in sparring where accidents are most likely, and in sparring I will be forced to choose between using my hands to block strikes from my opponent, jumping out of the way, or getting hit/kicked. I'm not fit enough or fast enough to jump out of the way ever time. I don't really like being hit/kicked. That just leaves blocking it, which is my usual preferred method, but that puts a lot of force on the hands, even through the padded mits. So I'm going to excuse myself from that aspect of training for a few weeks.

The other thing that carries a greater than average risk of accidents is holding the breaking boards. I wont be doing that for a while either.

Other than that, there's not much in our training that really puts any load on the hands. There's plenty of pushups, but that puts the load on the palms which are fine.

The sad part is I'll also have to excuse myself from my favourite part of training. I love it when we get the pads out for kicking and punching, or when we do silly stunts involving things like jumping over stuff, landing head first but on our hands, rolling over and landing back on our feet. Its immense fun, but if you misjudge the landing you wallop your hands quite hard. Last time I did it, which was after I smashed my fingers in a sparring match but before someone kicked them while I was holding the board, I did a jump and roll, get the trajectory wrong, and whacked my hand on the hard floor having both missed the mat and misjudged where to put my spare hand. It hurt, but I guess not as much as the lad that didn't get his arms in the right position at all and landed on his head and shoulders

 

I would be crap at it as my instincts were always to take what was coming and land my own at the same time! If they're trying to lamp me that leaves them defenceless

 

Stay in one piece Clueless!

 

That's usually the case, buts its why in our style there is every bit as much emphasis on kicking as punching. It means you can keep your guard right up with both hands while at the same time striking your opponent with your foot. Although you are right, any strike leaves you open to some extent. One of my favourite tricks is to briefly raise my guard too high, thus exposing my mid section, then when they fall for the bait and go to kick there, I swivel sideways, block their kick with one hand while simultaneously launching my own kick. The truth is is quite rare for either side to get through the other's defences because nobody wants to be hit or kicked. In theory it doesn't matter even if it does get through though because its not full contact. Its light contact only. Its about demonstrating our understanding of how to apply the techniques we've been taught, and how to improvise and adapt them to suit the situation, and not about actually trying to hurt each other. Although in practice, in the excitement of 'battle' it is possible to misjudge your force, hence the need to keep your guard nice and strong.

Some aspects of our current style go against my instincts too though. When I trained in kung fu years ago, one of the key objectives then was to get inside your opponent's minimum range. Anyone can throw a punch if their target is just the right distance away, but not so many people are not great at very close range stuff, so in kung fu a key principle is to get in really close, really fast, so that you are too close for your opponent to have any effective range. In our current style though, its the exact opposite. We're taught to keep our distance until we choose to move in. That doesn't come naturally to me because of course they too can choose to move in just as much as you can, so it is harder to control the situation and it uses a lot more energy with all that jumping back and forth Its all academic though, at least for me, because I'm not there to learn how to fight people. I just enjoy it for the training, the health benefits (smashed digits aside), and the social aspect.

 

In our club we are actually taught that there's no shame in legging it.