Firstly, it's a bank holiday weekend here in the UK and the weather was threatening to look quite nice (an uncommon occurrence here). This meant that traffic was absolutely choca-block. Concerns were first raised when my wife had left her friends house in Bristol at 10 o clock and was still not even halfway back by half 11. Fortunately my mother in law was kind enough to look after the kids while I went to the seminar.
When I got there the numbers were really low. Seems like loads of people either struggled to beat the traffic or just gave up. Chico himself (it was supposed to be his seminar) ended up arriving 2 hours late, taking 3 and a half hours to get from Cheltenham. A journey that usually only takes an hour.
Anyway, Ian stepped up and took the No Gi part of the class and we did some Leo Vieira style pummeling to takedowns and back takes. All stuff that Leo had previously referenced as the deciding factor in Demian Maia's recent UFC grappling domination of John Fitch (Leo is Demian's head bjj for mma instructor).
That all went well and everything was good. At the end of that hour and a half we did some No Gi rolling. Not a specialty of mine it has to be said. I've only grappled No Gi about maybe 10 times. First round went well against a guy from Dorset. Took his back and was a hairs width away from locking up a RNC as the round closed out.
Second round was against Marc Aplin who managed to duck around me to take a high back control (as I said in my last post, he's fast). I felt comfortable though and with the lesser friction of a rash guard in comparison to my gi, I was able to curl up reach under his right leg and pull it up to duck out and pop up in his guard. All well there. Unfortunately, and to absolutely no fault of Marc's, (I emphasize that because he was feeling guilty and it's in no way his fault) something moved painfully at the lower left frontal area of my rib cage. Very painfully. While curling up I obviously went too tight and managed to crush something together in there. Christ it hurt. We initially thought I'd either popped or cracked a rib. Marc was good enough to supply me with some painkillers and I quickly got off the mat.
Ironically, Chico turned up just after that so I had time to quickly say hello before disappearing home in a world of pain. Got home and me and my wife went down to A and E under her mother's advice (Pat's a nurse) to get an X Ray. The whole process was relatively quick and I was pleased to find out that nothing was broken OR out of position and the doctor also told me I had a nice, healthy set of lungs. That's a relief after the pain I was going through with them at the beginning of the year. She said the problem was that a muscle had popped through my rib cage. Causes a lot of pain and discomfort but generally heals after a week of rest.
Thank god it's not worse. Hopefully I'll still be able to compete at Hereford next month. We'll see how I go over the next 2 weeks and I'll make my decision then. Anyway, that certainly wasn't the ending to day I was hoping for but it definitely could've been much worse. I'll keep you updated on what happens.
¬m/
No comments:
Post a Comment