With every sport comes the risk of injury and unfortunately, I suffered one two days ago while at Judo. It started off fine like any other class where everyone was rolling and I was paired up with a black belt who’s hard to turn. In my attempt to turn him, using a method that had worked twice just before, my leg was too far extended and I attempted to curl it in in a sweeping motion. I felt a massive pop in my knee and I couldn’t move it. When it first happened, I thought I’d just completely blown my knee out and I had a quick flash vision of having surgeries and whatnot and not being able to work. Luckily, Judo Tim knows a great amount of anatomy and the injuries judoka suffer so he’d seen it before. He checked the integrity of my tendons and ligaments in my knee, ensuring that I hadn’t torn anything major. When I was able to get up and walk around on it without excruciating pain, that too was a good sign. The integrity was there.
According to Tim, I had essentially hyperextended the tendon in the back of my knee by putting so much pressure on it, it rolled off the track before popping back into place. In doing so, my bursa became inflamed and swollen, hence why I’m having some issues bending it now, but only when the movement includes a pulling motion that activates my hamstring and pulls on the tendon. Tim said it shouldn’t be too bad, but some days off of it would be good until it heals and I can move on it again like I did before. Until then, I may need some time off of it to let it heal fully.
In the meantime, I get to focus on my diet because I can’t do any running or cardio because I can’t move my leg very well. I’ll focus on my writing, completing the next chapter of FN, and healing up. Oh, and the picture above is from UFC Frank Mir vs. Brock Lesnar. While it’s not a picture of how my injury happened, it essentially had very similar effects on the knee. Now you have a bit of a visual because I’m sure I didn’t explain it all that well.
Drew Schroeder 