The most recent development in my Aikido training is learning when to quit. I say this as I currently have two injuries- both large toes in fact. What is even more annoying is that only one of these inuries is Aikido related.
The first injury occured about three weeks ago on my left large toe. Those of you who read this blog will know that I'm an Irish dancer and so a toe injury is NOT good. I could barley walk after dancing one evening so I decide to pay a visit to my GP as I was afraid it may be a bunion forming- Irish dancers are prone to them. Happily it turned out it was only a sprain. Ok thinks I, I will just be very very careful and not do any jumps or kicks for a week or two. Ha! Well, its taking longer to heal then what I anticipated. As we have a large show coming up it means it only has about five weeks to heal.
The second injury is Aikido related I have to say. I spilt my right large toe nail down the middle of the nail bed at the last session. So in the end, I went to a Chiropodist to make sure that the nail bed was trimmed down correctly and stop infection. Now, I don't like people looking at my feet- they're all callused and rough from my dancing, we dancers are not too kind to our feet. The first thing she remarked on when she saw the state of my feet was to ask me if I couldn't be a couch potato instead? Um, no was the answer to that question I'm afraid. Anyway, the nail trimmed back ok and should grow back about Christmas time.
I say I've learned how to quit because I have to have one toe taped up to stop the nail splitting further and figured a way of strapping part of my foot up to support the toe without hindering any movement. Therefore I find that I have to be patient with myself and allow time for these two injuries to heal. So basically this means still training and dancing but training and dancing carefully. Fatio!
