Aikido injury management is a frustrating thing. We all know it because we\u2019ve all been there. Sitting in a Doctor\u2019s office due to some random injury trying to explain to them that aikido is not like judo while they tell us not to train.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That would be fine except for one small problem. None of us is going to listen to that advice; because we are martial artists and therefore never show our pain nor listen to Doctors that don\u2019t understand the training. Over the years one of the most common things I\u2019ve encountered is people asking other aikidoka whether or not they can keep training with a certain injury. That injury may have come about during training, or be completely unrelated to mat time. The result is the same though, attempts to explain to a GP what aikido is, and a rejection of advice not to train.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This inevitably leads to questions in places like Facebook groups<\/a> along the lines of, \u201cI have X aikido injury, my doctor says I shouldn\u2019t train, what do you all think?\u201d The problem with this is that it generates a lot of advice from people who have no knowledge of the persons medical background, specific injury, physiotherapy programme, or nature of their training. Although well intentioned the advice given should be universally disregarded due to those reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This doesn\u2019t solve the problem though. Now we\u2019re left with making a judgement call. In these modern times that just shouldn\u2019t be necessary. Pictures tell a thousand words and moving pictures even more so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Realising that this is a problem for us I\u2019ve created a video that can be used to show health care professionals the nature of the training that we undertake in aikido. It has a few qualities that will help in this regard:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only locks that are included are kote gaeshi and nikkyo. Part of the reason for that is brevity. Another is that nikyo and kote gaeshi are at opposite ends of the wrist. If you aren\u2019t allowed to do either of those chances are you shouldn\u2019t be doing any of the others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The footage is reasonably old (taken from nidan<\/a> days) which explains the poor technique in places, but it should suffice for the intended purposes. Also the weapons work is sped up a bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With luck you\u2019ll find this useful and be able to show your GP\/Physiotherapist\/Surgeon something that will actually inform their opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n