Read it and weep!

Is the world conspiring against me? Or simply against me playing kendo?

Work situation reduced my playing time down from 3 nights to 1 and now a recent visit to the physio has dropped me to ZERO!!!!! At least for the next few weeks....

It all began back at the Founders Cup. I never noticed it over that weekend but over the following few weeks my right shoulder was sore, especially after playing. Like most of these things (and being a male) I assumed that it would go away and almost convinced myself that it had and then one morning I was being a silly bugger on my skateboard, slammed hard on the concrete on my shoulder, and the pain was back again. I gave it yet another week to improve but no luck. Finally, I missed my one night of training on monday as the shoulder was feeling pretty bad and I saw a sports physio on wednesday (thanks Vivian). The result?

I have a 'shoulder impingement'. The assumption is that I did some tendon damage (probably from having to play keikari-geiko with Jackson for my grading!) and this lead to swelling in the joint. So when I raise my arm the swelling pushes the bone out of its socket. What now?

At least a couple of weeks of no kendo, exercises, anti-inflammatory drugs, more visits to the physio and about a 6 to 8 week recovery. Bugger huh?

The lesson here? Act on an injury early to avoid a worse case scenario later, and count yourself lucky every time you have an opportunity to train. Do your stretching properly and think of poor clowns like me who will be looking at their watch at training times and thinking about you all training while I'm stuck at work or staring at the idiot box day dreaming of pulling my men on and facing off for some jigeiko with my friends. I hope it will happen one day soon.

Make the most of it,

Rick