Gut Check Time

The last few months have been tough for me. As I've found out, my shoulder injuries were not themselves the problem, but a symptom of other underlying issues. I'm not very good at explaining it but suffice it to say that I have issues with my skeletal alignment and, over time, this has caused several problems for me, including the stress on my shoulders, tendonitis on my left side, and severe migraines, the latter of which has severely affected my sleep to the point where there have been a few instances where I didn't sleep for a few days straight and the only relief I got was from drinking half a bottle of Nyquil and essentially knocking myself out. 

I've had limited success with my physiotherapy but the limited part is because my work schedule hadn't allowed me to go to physio even semi-regularly and so I would start from scratch every time. 

This has changed now as my employer is allowing me to stay at home for several weeks to get treated. To be honest, between my shoulder injuries, tendonitis, insomnia, and migraines, I'm tired (no pun intended) of thinking about all of this. I'm also tired of writing about all of this and I'm sure everyone is tired of reading about it. I hate to admit it, but when you never feel 100% physically, it weighs on your self-esteem and motivation. Negativity creeps in. My attendance in class has become even worse, not just from work but because I just didn't want to attend, and my training has suffered too. There's also a bit of guilt from perceiving myself as a bad teammate, which I posted about earlier. My physiotherapist is quite confident that regular treatment for several weeks combined with homework will take care of things. I'm really hoping that's the case. 

I guess these are the kind of situations that build character in a person. I was recently watching an episode of "Chopped" on the Food Network and one of the contestants was very confident, stating that she knew she would win because she had never failed at anything before. I laughed when I heard that, knowing from personal experience that failure is what makes a person stronger. This is something that I need to remember. It doesn't matter if you get knocked down, as long as you get back up again.

Natural Talent

People throw around the term "natural talent" all the time and it often refers to an athlete with extraordinary ability. But does that athlete actually have natural talent? Are people born with certain athletic abilities that give them an advantage over the average person? Traits such as a person's height can play a part but I now believe that what most people refer to as talent is actually the result of hard work. If you want to excel at something you have to practice.

Take any professional athlete and you can trace their success back to 1000's and 1000's of repetitions of whatever they do. Throwing a football, hitting a tennis ball, shooting a puck; it's all the same. This is a comforting thought because I definitely don't have "natural talent". When I started at SRKF, my flexibility was terrible, my balance was worse, and I couldn't do a set of 10 situps. Fast forward 16 months and all of those things have vastly improved. Was it natural talent at work? Nope. It was practice.

 So what does this mean? It means that it doesn't matter if I'm short or old or anything else. If I work hard enough, I will get better and better. The only limitations I have are the ones that I set for myself.

Pondering

I've been thinking a lot lately about my contribution to the team or the lack thereof. I'm starting to wonder if it's unfair of me to continue as a part of the team when I know from the get go that I can't fully participate due to my work schedule. If there weren't a limited number of spots on the team, maybe it wouldn't be an issue since at that point, any contribution would be worthwhile. But there are times when I feel like I'm taking up a spot that could be taken by someone who could attend all classes and practices. I feel like I take more than I give. 

At the end of the day, if everyone on the team could only contribute as much as I have, we'd have no lion dance and no demo. I'm not writing this to garner sympathy or feel sorry for myself; I'm truly trying to figure out the balance of teamwork and selfishness that the pursuit of mastery seems to require.

Changing Things Up

Today I felt like I needed to change things up. I had been feeling like things were lacking for me physically. My diet hasn't been very good over the last three weeks or so and I've been feeling lethargic with my training, as well as with gym workouts.

My past experience at the gym has taught me that breaking out of a rut can usually be done with something as simple as trying new exercises or changing the music on your iPod (for those of us that use technologically superior Apple products). I applied a similar approach today and had good results.

Doing my forms with footwork only really helped me feel my stances. Dropping down into a bow stance really made me aware that my flexibility has improved and my bow stance felt lower and stronger. I was also more aware of how poor footwork messed up my power vector.

When I was doing crunches I tried to slow down and feel them more than usual and I found that it was a lot harder to do them this way. It's easy for me to let quality slip sometimes when I focus on quantity so this was a good reminder for a lesson that I had already learned.

Post Holiday Update

The Christmas break was great for me. I caught up with friends and family and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I also pretty much completely neglected Kung Fu. The great thing is that I don't feel guilty about it but instead I feel refreshed and ready to go. On second thought, maybe it's not correct to say that I neglected Kung Fu because, while it's true that I didn't do much in the way of training, I still continued with acts of kindness. I also pushed myself out of my comfort zone a couple of times over the holidays and kept up with my stretching routine. These things helped me keep a certain level of engagement while getting a break at the same time.