Lessons in Remedial Hubris (Patreon)

I've spend the last few weeks recovering from a back injury.

I've been fairly lucky in the Injuries Department thus far in my life, which is saying a lot when your hobbies and/or fields of employment involve getting yanked into the air on wires, thousand-pound animals trying to trample you, dangling off high objects, and attempting to sit on my own head.

In circus – as with any new acolyte to the world of aerial and acrobatics and god knows what else – I earned my fair share of crappy rotator cuff injuries while trying to hang my heavy body off of those two small, unassuming joints.
I messed up my feet and my ankles and the occasional rib or two. 
I ripped up a lot of skin on my palms and occasionally elsewhere on my body but, by and large, acrobatics and aerial was fairly kind to me.

When I began training contortion, it was in my living room, or on a corner of the mats at an open gym – alone. No coaches; no one else trying to get stupidly bendy.
The whispers of injuries like fractures and herniated discs, and of future unknowns ('who knows what that does to your spine in the long-term?) were enough to make me move very slowly in my home practice. I spent months and months doing little more than cobras and bridges. I would dig through any offering YouTube had, scroll through endless Instagram accounts, looking at shapes that others' bodies were making that I was only dreaming of.
I had a healthy amount of apprehension about training my back the way that I was, and this is probably what kept me safe in those early days of trying various advanced tricks and positions with absolutely zero idea of how to actually hold myself there.

The injuries that did arise in my early days remained concentrated in my legs (for the most part): incorrect technique reared its head repeatedly as I tried to improve my splits flexibility. I had my share of neck issues (exacerbated by previous insult to those vertebrae in a hand-to-hand routine that went badly one night) that I worked through (and work with, still – AKA, manage), and my sacroiliac joint (where the base of your spine sits in between the two sides of your pelvis) found regular ways to be irritable and enflamed until I learned how to use the rest of my spine for backbends.

Going to Mongolia last year brought a whole new barrel of fun: bleeding gums and wiggly teeth from trying to train zubnik (mouthpiece) too much, too fast; a compressed nerve somewhere in the base of my cervical spine that kept the outside half of my lower arm and hand completely numb for over a month (yikes), lots of sprained forearms from one coach hanging 30lb kettlebells off of them in a misguided attempt to 'straighten' my elbows.

Now that I've painted a semi-adequate picture of what the baseline is we're working from, here – I have never ... never ... had the kind of injury that I experienced in March, in the course of my career as a professional contortionist.
It's not catastrophic; it's not career-ending; I'm chugging along just fine, getting better –
But god damn has it sucked (and been a massive kick in the ass reminder not to get over-confident in one's own abilities).

In the midst of the vast vacuum of quarantine-time, I was hitting my training sessions hard with a renewed focus on my contortion handstands.
Progress was being made.
It was all very exciting.
The day before this injury, I lay in bed after training, feeling weird, and thinking to myself, Man. I need a mental health day.
And then immediately questioning, Why do you need a mental health day? Nothing is happening.
And then responding to myself: LOTS IS HAPPENING AND IT'S ALL STRESSFUL.
I sighed and told myself that I would just have to see how I felt the next day, regarding training.

I woke up the following day, feeling draggy and not myself, and again was like, MAN I really don't want to train today ...
Again the persistent internal dialogue manifested: There's nothing else that you're doing; routine is important; don't be lazy; stick to your training plan.
I browbeat my gut instinct into submission and carried on with my day as previously planned.

I warmed up.
I got into my handstands.
And I did them over, and over, and over, and over again.
Just like the day before.
And the day before that.
And the day before that.

I finished my session, somewhat satisfied with my performance, and began gathering up my things. Then ...
Why do my legs feel like jello?
Why do the outsides of my legs feel all pins-and-needles-y?
Why do I feel like I have to pee? I don't. That can't be good.
I waited for the various unwelcome feelings to go away.
Walked around a little bit.
But they persisted.

I went out on an errand with Tig – this was before they shut down Canadian Tire per advanced quarantine measures – and found myself struggling to keep up with the easy pace he was setting across the parking lot, to the front doors of the store.
This isn't good, I thought to myself.
I knew roughly what this meant.
I knew roughly that I'd done something to make my spine very unhappy with me.

I resisted the urge to google all of my symptoms and reached out to Jen instead who – with admirable restraint – confirmed calmly that  (a) yes, it sounded like I had royally messed something up in my back and (b) I was officially in "healing, NOT training" mode. I was firmly warned not to google any of the somewhat dramatic-sounding things SHE had said either, on the phone (she knows me so well) (I did it anyways) (she probably knew I'd do that too, though...).
The short, non-scary version of events is that I inflamed*** nerves in my lower spine that then created the above-described unpleasant array of symptoms.
If we weren't in the middle of a quarantine, Jen said, she would prefer that I go get some imaging done to rule out fractures/stress fractures but ...
Well, we are in the middle of a quarantine.
I was to wait and see how symptoms persisted or decreased.
Cool.
Great.
Fantastic.
(*** fun fact:  there has been ample contention in various dictionaries over the centuries as to whether the spelling is "inflamed" or "enflamed"; since about the 1600s, the former (spelling it with an 'i') has been the more popular, widely accepted spelling. Now you know.)

Did I know it was possible to injure my back like this?
Yes. Sure.
Did I think it was going to happen to me?
Absolutely not! I made it all the way through my gauntlet of training in Mongolia without ever messing up my lower back.  I'm experienced! Knowledgeable! I know what happens when you let ego take charge in training. Blah, blah, blah, blah ...

Nope.

So here we are.  
It's been 2.5 weeks.  
The major symptoms began to fade around day 2 or day 3.  
Things came and went in mild forms for the days following that.  
I've renewed my efforts to have proper muscular control over posterior pelvic tilt (AKA , being able to control my noodly lower back with conscious intention) through straight handstand training.
I'm not back to full backbending – yet.
Just making small baby steps.
I don't feel anxious about it – it'll all come together again just fine – but I don't feel like I'm in a massive rush to jump back in, either.  

Consider this my lesson learned in Remedial Hubris.
Don't do what I did while going stir-crazy in quarantine, folks.
Listen to your bodies.
Don't doubt your gut instinct.
Take breaks.
There's no rush.
There's no race.
We don't even know where the finish line is. 

Your next treat is going to be a short little video on one of the treatment modes the ever-lovely Dr. Jen Crane did on my low back last week.

Hope you're not squeamish! ;) 

xoxox

stay strange & wonderful

ess