Dealing with Pain – A Martial Artist’s Frequent Companion – Part IV

Pain has an immediacy to it. It demands our attention and can totally dominate what we think and do. A painful injury during a fight or a match can often spell defeat. So it’s critical we learn to set our pain threshold as high as possible.

As I mentioned in my last post, pain serves a very important and useful function. It notifies us when something is wrong somewhere within our bodies and insists we drop everything we’re doing and take care of it. That, of course, is not always possible. Plus, some injuries require immediate treatment. But most do not. Once pain has warned us, its purpose has been served and it must be shut off so as not to distract us.

Pain is what is known as a relative sensation. What to one man is severe may be barely noticeable to another. Also, what may seem excruciating under certain circumstances may be tolerable under a different set. Some of this is due to genetics and some to psychological or sociological factors.

On the genetics level, we’ve all likely seen those people who are what they call “non-responders” in jujitsu and pressure point systems. You crank on a wrist lock and the recipient just looks at you, feeling no pain whatsoever. Others howl and dance around. Some of this could be due to an improperly applied lock or attack. But there are a significant number of people who are just wired differently than the rest of us.

You also have people who are tougher mentally than others, for whatever reason. They may have endured a lot of pain growing up or while in the military or on the street and so on. You see similar reactions in top athletes in a variety of sports and activities. Pain is often the fork in the road that separate champions from the also-rans. Most will “hit the wall” and the pain will cause them to back off. The top performers will keep on going or perhaps go even harder.

I’ve worked with a variety of Olympic, professional, and national and world caliber champions over the years. They all have this ability in common. They know that if they can’t work within the pain zone, they will never achieve their goals for a high finish. They know all of their major competitors work regularly within the pain zone. In fact, they see pain as a positive sign. It tells them that they are working within the champion’s zone, the zone where only the very best train or perform.

I’ll discuss this important subject further in my next post. Thanks again for reading my humble ramblings.

Dealing with Pain – A Martial Artist’s Frequent Companion – Part III

There are mental skills we can acquire that enable us to better deal with pain. And there are also old, traditional methods for toughening our bodies, making us less susceptible to injury and thereby effectively preventing pain from being introduced – or introduced at a lower level, making it easier or unnecessary to manage. I’ll likely look at both.

We have a wide array of drugs available today for dealing with pain. These can be taken by mouth or delivered into the blood stream or injury site by injection. Pain specialists can use scalpels or even radio waves to sever or disrupt pain nerves. But most of the drugs have very negative side effects. And none of the methods available to us will be of much use when needed most, during a serious fight. We need methods that are readily available (meaning always with us).

Pain is a wonderful notification system that has evolved over millions of years and serves a very important function. Without it, we would not likely he here. Pain informs us of a problem somewhere within our bodies, enabling us to take counter measures before permanent injury can occur or get medical help to mend it. It tells us to remove our hands from a fire or hot stove, to bend our elbows or knees before our arms or legs break, to mend a cut before we bleed out, and so on.

But once it has informed us of a problem during a fight, it needs to be switched off so it doesn’t prevent us from taking appropriate action. If a person gets punched in the nose and thinks only about how badly his nose hurts, he is soon likely to have more body parts in need of attention. We need to be able to forget about our noses and focus only on defeating the person who hit us. Then, after the fight is over, we can turn our attention back to our noses.

Psychologically, we’re capable of many things, both positive and negative, which many feel are beyond our power to control. We often hear of high powered business executives who die shortly after retiring, no longer faced by the challenges which made life enjoyable for them. When a spouse dies, it’s often not long before the other dies too, often within weeks. Following a severe injury or a bout with some disease, people often surprise their doctors when the live or die. They are sometimes deemed to have lived “because they wanted to bad enough." They die because they "simply gave up."

We are capable of both increasing and decreasing our sensitivity to pain and the effects it has on us in emergency or training situations. All that is needed to increase our pain tolerance in many situations is information and a few psychological skills. We’ll look at some of these in coming posts.

Thanks for your continued support.

Dealing with Pain – A Martial Artist’s Frequent Companion – Part II

Many years ago, I published a two-part article, entitled Pain - The Unnecessary Hindrance, in Black Belt magazine. I was at Stanford at the time and had access to people and information associated with a major pain study being conducted by the university. Leading experts in psychology and medicine were working to develop drug-free methods for assisting terminal cancer patients deal with the severe pain of their disease.

Traditionally, they were given morphine, which relieved pain but also badly dulled their senses. This prevented them from spending quality time with their families and loved ones during their final days. When my own mother was in the last stages of cancer in the 80s, she went through just such a treatment. She would sit and stare off into the distance, unresponsive to most of the conversation around her, unaware we were even there. She had been such a bright and vibrant woman that I found the effects of the drug (and disease) dehumanizing, stealing from her those qualities that had made her so special.

When I wrote the article, I interviewed several top martial artists and posted their thoughts. Some of these men, unfortunately, aren’t with us any longer.

One of these was my friend and martial arts brother, Bob Halliburton, the highly successful, longtime karateka and competitor and a man who was no stranger to pain. He believed the ability to ignore or suppress pain was crucial for a martial artist. “I think that in karate, overcoming pain is probably of prime importance,” he said.

Out of a martial artist’s journey to master pain came some of the benefits for which the martial arts are renowned. “People in karate always talk about the self-discipline aspect of karate,” said Halliburton. “But it only comes from learning to overcome pain, because basically that's what karate all boils down to. It's a very painful exercise and a long road to get over that pain aspect.”

Benny Urquidez, the undefeated world lightweight full contact karate champion, talked about what he called his "five rules for fighting." One of these was not to show pain.

"If you show a fighter that you're injured,” he said, “it's like you're boosting him. It's like you're patting him on the back. By showing him you're hurt, you give him more energy. No matter if you're hurt, the idea is to not show it."

According to Halliburton, the serious martial artist had little choice but to learn to overcome and hide his pain. And he thought it true not only in competition but also on the street.

"From a sport standpoint or from the self-defense standpoint," said Halliburton, "you have two alternatives. You can give in to the pain and get beat up, get killed possibly, or learn to overcome the pain, because it's really the lesser of two evils. You have to draw the line as to where your priorities are. You're hurt, you know that, but mentally you have to overcome that pain, at least until that situation is over."

So now the question is "How can I overcome pain?" We’ll look at that issue in my next post.

Dealing with Pain - A Martial Artist's Frequent Companion - Part I

When they were all seated in a row for final dispatch, Sakon turned to the youngest and said- “Go thou first, for I wish to be sure that thou doest it right.” Upon the little one’s replying that, as he had never seen seppuku (disembowelment) performed, he would like to see his brothers do it, and then he could follow them. The older brothers smiled between their tears:-“Well said, little fellow. So canst thou well boast of being our father’s child.” When they had placed him between them, Sakon thrust the dagger into the left side of his abdomen and said-“Look, brother! Dost thou understand now? Only, don't push the dagger too far, lest thou fall back. Lean forward, rather, and keep thy knees well composed.” Naiki did likewise and said to the boy-“Keep thine eyes open, or else thou mayst look like a dying woman. If thy dagger feels anything within and thy strength fails, take courage and double thine effort to cut across.” The child looked from one to the other, and when both had expired, he calmly half-denuded himself and followed the example set him on either side.

From Dr. Inazo Nitobe’s Bushido, The Soul of Japan

This, the true story of Sakon, Naiki, and eight-year-old Hachimaro, was passed down to us by a 17th-century Japanese physician who attended and witnessed the disembowelment. What has always impressed me most about this event was the stoic way in which the youngest brother, Hachimaro, was able to overcome what must have been both intense fear and pain in order to perform the supreme act expected of him by his family and society.

Pain can be the frequent companion of anyone who trains seriously in the martial arts. Broken bones, blisters, bruises, sprains and torn ligaments and muscles can become all too familiar. Since they can greatly affect one's performance and even their continued training, the ability to overcome fear and pain is an important skill, which I’ll be delving into in coming posts.

How to catch an arrow – Part XI

There is a light-hearted Facebook group that focuses humorously on what they call the Asian Grading Scale. (One of my Asian students brought this to my attention.) According to members of the group, the following is what standard American academic letter grades represent to their Asian parents:

A = Average

B = Below-average

C = Crap!

D = Death!

F = I’m F…ed!

A teenage boy recently posted – “I just got a C in math on my report card. Goodbye little electronic communication device!”

My position has always been something similar when it came to the acquisition of skills and information that could determine whether I or my family lived or died.

When I became one of the national coaches, I heard a lot of discussion about acceptable probabilities of success relative to various techniques and tactics. A prominent view was that a team member should never attack unless they had at least an 80% chance of success. Others placed the bar at 90%.

But is 80% or even 90% good enough when what’s at stake is not just a medal or trophy but your very life? Of course not. “One encounter, one chance.” In such situations, the likelihood of success has to be as close to 100% as you can get it, if you have an option.

There was a guy who appeared on That’s Incredible! around the same time I did. His specialty was jumping over speeding cars. He would run towards a very low-slung car that was racing straight at him. At the last instant, he would jump into the air and the car would pass underneath him. I have no idea how many times he practiced this skill. But the second time I saw him perform it, things didn’t go well. His timing was off or he didn’t get high enough and the upper edge of the car’s windshield hit and shattered one of his feet. He summersaulted into the air and landed hard on the asphalt, doing further damage. I never heard how he came out on his injuries.

There were people at the time who questioned my intelligence for taking the risks I did. But, although I’ll own up to being at least a little crazy back then, I wasn’t stupid (or maybe not as stupid as they thought I was). For one thing, it helped pay my tuition at Stanford. For another, before any appearance, I would practice a lot. I’d generally try to catch at least 500 arrows at the dojo in preparation.

This is where many go wrong. They try something a handful of times, or merely imagine they can do it, then try it (perhaps for the first time) on-camera or in front of an audience. We see these “fails” all the time on YouTube and TV shows like Tosh.O.

There was an old secret scroll given to those who received a menkyo kaiden in an ancient Japanese spear school. The scroll said: “By what you do today, you live tomorrow. That is the value of practice.” Not the biggest secret in the world. But, surely, one of the most important bits of advice, then as it is now.

It’s okay, sometimes even advantageous, to be a little crazy. But it’s seldom ever okay to be stupid.

Thanks again for your support.

How to catch an arrow – Part X

We live at a time, at least in this country, when everyone bends far, far over backwards to make sure not a single person’s feelings are ever hurt, no matter how slightly. We can’t have failures feeling like failures, so what do we do about it? Well, we don’t do what we should, tell them the truth, that they need to get off their butts and put in the time and effort necessary to achieve success. No. What we do is tell losers that they are actually winners.

The upside of this approach is we now have a bunch of people who feel good about themselves in spite of their unaccomplished lives. The downside is they are thereby prevented from ever achieving real success – they are already successes, according to their parents and teachers, so what is there to achieve?

Self esteem is the buzz phrase du jour. It’s no longer restricted to just those who have actually done something to deserve it. Everyone gets to have it today, deserving or not. Mothers brag about how their little guy “tried his best”, even though he failed abysmally and performed far below his best. All that matters is that he made an effort, no matter how slight.

There’s an old saying that people fail for two reasons: one, they don’t even try. And two, they try and come up short. But I think there’s a third reason, one which probably explains most failures – people don’t try hard enough.

Too many today mistake familiarity with mastery. They think ten or a hundred reps are adequate to master a skill, when it takes hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, to truly master a complex physical skill.

There are many things in life that require more than just familiarity and more than just an effort. Some things must be executed perfectly (or very close to it) the very first time. Among these are defending ourselves in life or death battles, parachute jumping, and perhaps catching arrows shot at a challenging speed and distance.

I’ll talk more on this and how it relates to the subject at hand next time. Thanks for your continued support.