It looks like our school is going to have a sizeable crew heading to Legends of Kung Fu 2009 (aka Taiji Legacy 2009).  I’ve set up a little forum for us to discuss it and so as not to spam out my regular twitter followers about it, I set up a LoKF-specific twitter.  After the event, I’ll probably rename it for my more general martial purposes.

If you’re interested in news related to Chinese martial arts, you should take a look at my new project, Shaolin Accelerator.  I plan to post links and articles regularly there, but I don’t think Blog Fu is going to be getting much attention.  For my personal stuff, you’ll be better off following my tumblr and my twitter.

If you’re looking for planning and discussion related to the Legends of Kung Fu tournament in Dallas in July 2009, try the forum here.

And you can always email me if there’s something else you can’t find.

Earlier this month we started learning the Lung Shou Pai wooden dummy form. In our style we use a Choy Lay Fut style dummy, a ching jong, rather than the Wing Chun style muk jong. The primary difference is the upper arm is on a pivot inside the body and is held in place with a spring, so when you pull it down, it pops back up. We’ve gotten some plans and I hope to start building my own soon, possibly as early as this weekend.

I’ve also started picking up our straight sword form from a couple of the other black belt students. That’s progressing especially slowly since I have to catch them outside of class to get the next few moves, then practice on my own. It may be the only way I’ll get to learn it, though, since we may not roll back around to it in class for years.

If all goes well, I’ll start really preparing for my third degree test one year from now. I’m already ramping up toward that end, though. I’ve been wearing ankle weights in class, working with a kettlebell to develop strength and endurance, and eating lots of ice cream to build up my resistance to cold temperatures.

I finished up my physical therapy today.  I have one more follow-up appointment with my doctor next week, but he said if I’m feeling fine I can just cancel it rather than showing up.  I’ll wait until the last minute before deciding.  I’ve had some slight pain in my heel while running and walking hard, but I think it’s more a case of having to relearn how to distribute my weight properly than a real injury.

You know what’s funny?  About once a day since I got injured, I’ve had somebody jokingly ask me when I’m going to start practicing parkour again.  It was vastly hilarious while I was on crutches, deeply creative while was in a walking boot, meaningful and thought-provoking while I was working through physical therapy, and always witty and welcome humor.  Every time I heard it, I’d laugh and laugh.  Good times.  I’d even manage to suppress the desire to hit them with my cane.

The joke, you see, is that a lot of people seem to think that parkour itself is innately dangerous, superfluous, silly, stupid, or for some other reason a pastime that I should’ve known better about.  It’s a bitingly acerbic way to say “I told you so,” or more accurately, “I disapproved of the whole endeavor from the beginning and look what it got you.”  Also “Surely you’re going to give up this foolish notion now, right?”

So I’m going to say it once more:  I got hurt because a waist-high concrete wall broke into pieces under my hands.  I didn’t fall off anything: I was at ground level.  I didn’t screw up a technique or fumble a landing.  A chunk of rock the size of a breadbox landed on my leg.  I can’t recall anybody anywhere warning me about that part.  I’m pretty sure that has very little to do with parkour.

So will I go back to parkour?  I don’t know.  I’m going to focus on kung fu for now, and possibly running.  I want to get back to practicing solidly and maybe start preparing to compete at next year’s Taiji Legacy.  I’d love to run a 5K, just to demonstrate to myself that I’ve recovered enough to manage it.

I can honestly say, though, that even if I never again attempt a monkey vault or a cat leap, it won’t be because I got hurt.  It won’t be because of any of the smirking jokers who implied that I brought my injury on myself.  It won’t be because somebody “told me so.”

While I hate that I got injured, while I regret the pain for myself and my wife and friends, while I begrudge the time and money that my recovery has cost, I don’t for one second regret that I tried.  I found something I was interested in and decided to pursue it.  I believed and continue to believe that I’m physically and mentally capable of parkour, kung fu, hang gliding, scuba diving, snowboarding, and anything else I find myself wanting to do.  Anybody who wants to sit on the couch and sneer about it can go hang.  If I get hurt, I’ll take my lumps without complaint, and I’ll show my scars to anybody who wants to see them.

And if I do start training parkour again, every time I jump or vault or roll, I’ll be thinking about all those jerks who smirked “When are you going to start again?”  Screw you, buddy.  I never stopped.

Just in time for my birthday, I got an email from USA Chin Woo announcing the dates for next year’s Taiji Legacy, newly renamed as The Legends of Kung Fu.  Mark your calendars for July 17-19 and start practicing.  I’ll see you there.

I’m doing two sessions of physical therapy a week now, mostly strength and mobility stuff. One-leg presses to redevelop and retrain the damage to the big muscles. Balancing on only my injured ankle on a squishy foam block while throwing and catching a medicine ball to force the little stabilizer muscles to earn their keep. Toe raises. Ankle alphabets. Theraband pulls from every angle. Heelcord stretchs a dozen different ways, morning, noon, and night. And now tai chi.

If you’ve ever done any tai chi, you know how much ankle flexing, turning, and pulling is involved. My therapist signed off on it and I’m happy to get any kind of practice at all. Plus it really shows me where I am in my recovery.

I have about three weeks of therapy left. I may be able to return to class after that, I dunno. It feels like I’m palpably better every day. Yesterday I still had a little trouble with stairs. Today the stairs at work were pain-free. One of my friends at kung fu was surprised to see how quickly I’m bouncing back. “You sure heal fast,” he said.

“I get lots of practice.”

I don’t usually use cut tags, but these photos of my leg in varying stages of healing are a little gruesome.  The first photo was taken right after they removed the post-surgical bandages, so it’s a week healed at that point.  The most recent one is how it looks now.  There are no photos of the injury before surgery.  As I lay in the emergency room, Billy offered to take some for me, but I discovered that I deeply believe that no man should have to look upon his own bones.  I declined.

(more…)

I’m completely off crutches. I can walk without the boot, but it’s slow and uncomfortable and my foot is still really swollen, so I stick with the boot most of the time. I don’t really need the cane, but it takes my weight off the injured leg so it makes things easier and I figure it’s probably a good idea to reduce the amount of stress it has to bear, at least until the wound is completely healed.

I’m healing well. I can walk on my injured leg now, albeit slowly and primarily with the big black space boot. I could probably manage walking without it if not for the swelling that prevents me from flexing my ankle much.

I’m tired of crutches. It’s been startling to discover just how much using them wears me out. Yesterday we went to refill some prescriptions and after crutching to and from the store, I had to beg off running other errands just because of exhaustion. I’m not quite healed enough to leave them behind, but I think next week I’ll try just using a cane for any short stretches and only use the crutches for long distances. I move really slowly without them anyway.