Welcome to Episode #97 of the Fight for a Happy Life podcast, “Little Pain, Big Trouble.”
Pain is part of life… especially if you’re a martial artist! But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to minimize injuries and avoid trouble. Those should be your first priorities in studying self-defense, in fact!
Even though I KNOW this, I recently caused myself some unnecessary pain while preparing to move from Los Angeles to Raleigh, NC. I’m embarrassed to admit that my arm still hurts even as I type this!
This little pain, however, serves as a great reminder that bad technique (combined with a bad attitude!) only makes life more difficult. I hope that by sharing my story, you can avoid some unnecessary pain in your life.
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Little Pain, Big Trouble
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TRANSCRIPT
Howdy, and welcome back to Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better. My name is Ando, and I’m always happy when you can drop by and spend a little time, especially today, because I think I’ve got a pretty important topic.
Today, I want to talk about pain. Now, I’ve talked about pain before. Usually, injuries, training injuries. I’ve shared some stories from the past, shared my advice on how to talk to your body to get back to your full strength, but that’s not really what I want to talk about today.
Today, I want to talk about chronic pain, the kinds of pain that don’t go away. So rather than looking at managing pains and rehabbing them, I’d like to talk about, hopefully, preventing pain and prehabbing.
I would love if you could have a pain-free life.
Of course, that’s impossible. I’m going to tell you right now, spoiler alert, pain is part of life, not just emotional pain, but as I’m learning as I get older, physical pain. I’m not sure if it’s completely avoidable.
I’m 51 as of today. Today, I am 51. So, I’m here to tell you, life has changed a bit. I never thought about chronic pain in my teens, 20s, 30s, or 40s. Now that I’m over 50, it is part of life.
If you’ve been following me at all, you know that I’ve been dealing with a trigger finger for almost a year now. It’s still not easy to make a fist on this hand. It’s also the case that for several years now, I’ve had increasing pain in my feet because the cartilage has gone on my big toes. So that’s affecting some of my footwork at the very least. That pain is not going away.
I also just got an MRI back last week that confirms that I have a couple of herniated discs. So I’ve got to deal with that.
Now don’t feel sorry for me, I’m still very active, I’m still learning and teaching. I’m a happy guy. But it is a wake up call that things could get worse if I’m not careful. And that’s what I want to share with you today. What I’m learning, if I’m a little older than you, things to avoid, or if we’re about the same age or you’re a little older, what I’m learning about where this pain is coming from. So hopefully again, you can avoid some of it.
Now I will tell you that all the pains that I’ve just described usually had some warning signs. There were usually some clues, but I wasn’t that wise in recognizing them. So I think I’m getting a little better at that. So hopefully you can head off some of this pain by my sharing how what I’m learning.
So let’s talk about how the pains have happened and let’s talk about how to minimize them.
The best way to do it is with the most recent example of a pain that I’ve been causing myself. This is brand new, week old stuff. You might notice as a setup for the story that I’m sitting in an empty room. I’ve been in Los Angeles for 28 years. I’ve been in this apartment for 23.
Over eight years ago, this is where I recorded my first podcast and many since. But it’s time to go. After COVID, priorities have shifted a bit. Economics have shifted a bit. And my wife and I said, I think we’ve had enough of the West Coast. Let’s go back East where our families are actually living.
So for my wife, absolutely for sure, moving back to the East Coast to be near family is what it’s all about. For me, don’t tell her, it’s the barbecue. My number one priority will be hunting down the best pie and the best barbecue possible. All right.
I’m also very excited to be meeting new people. I already know a couple of great teachers in the area, so I know I’ll be able to continue learning, and I’m absolutely going to be teaching. Probably start an online class with Zoom. I have an in-person group and private training, of course, and I will continue online offering. So you’ll be hearing more from me. So don’t worry in case that was something you were worried about.
All right, so now, how did I hurt myself? Well, like I said, we’re moving. And since we both have strained backs lately, we hired movers. The deal we made with the movers was, the package we got, was they would take care of the big stuff, the bed, the couch, dressers, and we would take care of everything else.
Now, like I said, we haven’t moved in decades. So I admit that we completely underestimated how much work it takes to pack. And even though we’re two people and we live, very simply, it still turned out to be, I think, 5,600 pounds of stuff.
Now, in this packing process, we use a lot of boxes and a lot of this stuff, packing tape. All told, the truck, when you go down the log, the list that they make to load the truck, we had 146 items on the truck, boxes. And we’re talking big boxes for some artwork and the television. And we had some smaller boxes, but a lot of boxes.
My job, my wife likes to pack, but my job was primarily to put those boxes together and to seal those boxes up when they were full. And then to stack them as we go. Now, I can’t do the math on this, but if you figure over a couple of tons of stuff and 146 boxes, and you figure how many times that I had to run a strip of tape along the creases of those boxes, the edges, I can’t even tell you how many rolls of tape I went through, let alone how many times I had to go like this.
Now, that’s where the story is leading here. I’m right-handed, I held the tape like this. So that’s thumb down, elbow up, and most of the time I’d be reaching across my center line, depending on the size of the box, around the corner of the box, put down some pressure, drag that as tautly as I could across the box, press it down, and then go around the far corner, or the closer corner, I guess, and then do that little flick of the wrist to cut the tape. And I did that countless times.
Now, the other part of this that I should admit to you is in not underestimating the amount of work it takes to pack, we ended up doing an all-nighter. I would say seven-eighths of the stuff that we put on that truck we did in the last 36 hours. So we were grinding it out at the end, which meant that all of those, I’m going to say thousands of reps of putting that tape down, was all in a very short time period.
I will tell you that the next night after we had moved, I’m going to skip ahead a little bit, I woke up in the middle of the night because my arm was burning and I couldn’t move my arm. It was just stuck next to my side. And just moving my arm, trying to lift it a little bit, couldn’t lift a glass of water, couldn’t brush my teeth with it. My arm, I still can feel it. This is only within the last week. I can still feel it.
It’s cooling off now, but at first I had no idea it had anything to do with the packing because I’m a little slow. I’d gone to a jiu-jitsu class, now post-quarantine. I was happy to go back and kind of do a goodbye round with a couple of the guys at BJJ. And I did get caught in an armbar once.
So my first thought was, see, I can’t snap with that finger, my first thought was, that guy, Mike, he jacked up my arm. So that’s what I was thinking about for most of the day until I needed one more box put together. We have some odds and ends that we have to ship. So I went to grab the tape, and when I tried to even just fake it to get into that position, just to start it, I felt that burn again.
Then Dr. Ando figured out, Oh, this is basically like tennis elbow. This is an inflamed tendon. I’m glad it wasn’t more serious. It wasn’t a jacked up arm. It’s just something I’m going to have to just live with temporarily. I realize this is not chronic pain, unless I’m an idiot. I got to let this cool off. But it did teach me something. A lesson I thought I had learned a long time ago, but again, now that I’m older, I have to really take seriously. And that is…
Pain is a warning. Pain is a message.
A little pain. Your body doesn’t scream at you in the beginning. Your brain is kind to you. Maybe too kind. So in the beginning, you could do something that’s not necessarily good for your body, and you won’t even know it. It’s just not even on your radar.
But then at some point, when you start crossing that line into dangerous, reckless behavior, not necessarily reckless in that moment, but maybe 5 years out, 10 years out, 20 years out, that you’re starting to wear down something in your body, your body gives you a very little whisper. A very little bird starts to chirp in your ear in the form of pain, which again is not a bad thing, that your body is trying to protect you.
Pain is a protective mechanism to say, stop this, don’t do this anymore. Put your attention here. Fix this.
So that would be the first little lesson here. Pain is not your enemy. Pain is your friend. If you ignore the pain, and you let that little pain turn into a big pain, then you got a problem. Now it’s your enemy. Now it’s something you’re going to have to battle with and bring in doctors and surgeons to deal with. You can’t even fight it alone sometimes.
But we want to avoid that, right? So back it up. That packing tape, this packing tape, was a great reminder of how to prevent pain. Because there were two main causes. I broke it down. Now that I’ve been reflecting in pain, I can move my arm a little bit again.
There were two main causes to the problem. Number one, technique. As martial artists, we all love talking about technique. How do you punch? How do you kick? What’s your favorite escape from this? What’s your favorite escape from that?
But please keep in mind that all of that just answers the question of what to do. It doesn’t tell you necessarily HOW to do it. If you just go from technique to technique, you just start pumping out reps, but you’re not really paying attention to how you’re performing those repetitions, that is opening the door to big problems.
And again, the only way you’re going to know that is if you’re slowing down sometimes and specifically asking, is this the right way to do this? And I don’t just mean write according to your teacher or according to your style or according to your heroes that you watch, your idols. I mean quietly, closing your eyes and feeling it in your body and asking your body, is this the right way to do this?
Do you feel strong? Do you feel smooth? Is this going to be a problem five years from now, ten years from now?
I beg you in your training, no matter what style you do, how old you are, don’t go all out all the time because it’s impossible to hear your body when you’re doing that. You’ve got too much other stimuli showering in on you. There’s just too much to pay attention to when you’re moving fast and you’re hitting hard.
There’s impact and vibration. You got partners. It’s intense. You won’t hear that little voice saying, Hey, that hurt. Hey, that’s a little tense. Hey, you twisted that. Hey, that’s pinching.
These are all very subtle cues. So absolutely technique, clean it up, slow down, feel it out, and figure out if you’re doing things the right way for your body’s health, for longevity. If you have watched some of my other videos, you’ll know that I’ve had, I learned that lesson a long time ago with my shoulders. I did too much pushing and not enough pulling, too much curling up and not enough expansion, and that led to some shoulder issues, which I’ve pretty much figured out how to manage and work within. But I don’t want you to even have to deal with it.
So seek the balance, seek something comfortable. And don’t get me wrong, everybody’s body breaks down. That’s part of the nature’s cycle, right? You’re kind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If you are training, you’re going to wear down your parts anyway. But prematurely is the problem. With extra pain that you didn’t have to experience is a problem.
So this is the kind of advice I’m trying to give you. You’re going to get hurt no matter what. Pain is part of life. But again, I just want you to be able to minimize it so you can continue the activities that you love, like martial arts training or whatever it is you do. Go fly a kite, but be able to do it with a smile and less ibuprofen.
We all break down, but you go farther if you’re smarter. So don’t just study your art, study you.
Now let me give you the second cause, the more embarrassing cause, to my pain, because putting down tape is not something I ever do. If I was a professional mover, a professional packer, well then maybe I would have a different technique, and I would have studied this already.
But let’s say I had already mastered the technique of making boxes and sealing up boxes, there was still another cause to my pain. And I don’t even like admitting it, but I’m going to. So here you go.
The second cause was attitude. I gave up even trying to do things right.
Like I said, we were under a lot of pressure. The movers were coming, we had underestimated how much work there really was to do, and so we found ourselves having to pull an all-nighter to get everything packed on time.
We were still sealing up boxes as the moving truck squealed. We heard them pull up outside, and the crew was getting off. There were still a couple of things we were still trying to shove into boxes and seal up. So we were really under the gun. And I’m going to tell you, I actually remember the moment.
It was around 2 o’clock in the morning, and we’ve been going at it, and I knew that we still had a ton to do, literally a ton to pack. And I gave up caring how I felt. The how went out the window. I only focused on what had to be done, the task. I gotta pack this stuff right now!
I remember leaning over boxes and straining my back. My back was burning. I remember being dehydrated. I didn’t stop for water. I didn’t take a breath. I didn’t shake it out. I didn’t stretch. I gave up all of that because the task felt so desperate. I had to get the packing done.
But I remember there was a moment where I said, I don’t care. I don’t care about my back anymore. I don’t care if this is perfectly sealed up. I don’t care. I just gotta get it done.
And that’s a problem because you got to ask yourself, how much do you care about being your best? How much do you really care about being at your best? At what point do you stop caring about your health or your well-being or doing things right, and then put yourself as the second priority and make the task number one?
Again, I think at some point we all go off the rails. At some point, there’s that breaking point where you say, I don’t care anymore. I don’t care what it looks like. I don’t care what you think of me. I don’t care about anything. I gotta get this done.
If you get stabbed, right? If you’re on the street and someone starts stabbing you with a knife, you see your blood come out. You probably won’t be thinking as much about what technique should I choose and does it look right? And is this as good as my last belt test? And what would an observer comment about my performance right now?
I bet you don’t care about any of those things because you’ll die if you do. At some point, you’re going to say, Oh, task at hand is what? I got to stop this guy from stabbing me and I got to stop the bleeding and I got to go seek medical help.
At some point, we flip that switch from how we’re doing things back to what am I doing? What needs to be done? But along the way, you can make things worse is my point. If you have given up on your own personal safety, your personal comfort, then you might find yourself in that panic situation earlier than if you had just taken your time to be a little more aware, prevent a little bit of that trouble, maybe you wouldn’t end up getting stabbed.
If you had cared a little earlier about what’s going on around me, what’s my awareness telling me? How can I prevent this bad guy from getting closer? Why didn’t I see that knife? Why am I here in the first place?
It’s a fine balance is what I’m trying to say. But I do know that there was a point when I gave up. I gave up caring, being healthy anymore. I told myself, why don’t you just slow down and stretch for a little bit? I was like, no, I don’t care.
Why don’t you just take a breath? I literally didn’t even care about taking a breath. At some point, I’ll just go all the way dark. I actually felt like we were never going to finish. It was dark. There was no light. We had nowhere. There were so many boxes that there was nowhere to sit down or lie down. So you’d have to go outside if you really wanted to stretch and take a breath anyway. And I’m going to admit to you that at some point, I actually felt like I don’t even care if I die.
I’m not kidding about that. I believe my wife felt the same way. So this isn’t like a big, big revelation. But do you know what I’m talking about? Has this happened to you?
I’ve talked about it in Jiu Jitsu. I’ve talked about being pinned and being exhausted and just being so desperate and so out of gas that I felt like I accept death at this point. I accept that you win, I lose, and I’m okay with it. And it’s actually a peaceful state of mind. It’s not frightening.
I’ve talked about that, accepting death in other podcasts. But it was that moment again, even in just packing, I reached a point where I didn’t care if I made it to my birthday. If I had died that night– I’ve had good food, I’ve had lots of laughs, I feel like I’ve accomplished some things– I really could die happy. Everything past this point is a bonus.
That night, I was almost ready to just cash in my chips. No joke. But is that healthy? Is that rational? That packing for the truck should get me to the point where I was okay to accept death?
That’s how much attitude can play a part in your life. And I’m hoping that you can hang on a little bit longer with whatever you’re going through, whatever pain you’re experiencing, whatever tasks you have on your list. Hang on a little bit longer. Please hang on a little bit longer.
Don’t give up on the dream, on the goal, on the actions that you’re taking to be your best, to be your best self. Don’t give that up.
So let me put this together. Pain’s a part of life, yes. Chronic pain, I believe, increasingly will become more a part of my life. And will be probably part of yours too. But as much as possible, I think we should be working actively to minimize that pain. And if we can prevent it, prevent it. This is what self-defense is all about.
Now you know, as a student of self-defense, the advice that, the best advice you hear, is it’s not about techniques. It’s hopefully about avoiding trouble and preventing trouble. And how do you do that? With awareness, right? And taking action as early as possible to improve a situation.
As soon as someone’s starting to call you out and act belligerent, that’s the time maybe to go home or to walk away, to try to de-escalate. I don’t want a situation to get to the point where I have to punch or hope that my knife disarms are up to snuff. Or anybody’s.
You’re always trying to work with your awareness to prevent trouble. And the earlier the better. Those are the rules of self-defense. Like I said, the trigger finger, the hallux rigidus in my feet, the herniated discs, they all came with warning signs, little whispers of, Hey, maybe that’s not such a great idea. Hey, maybe a little less of this and a little more of that.
But I didn’t listen to those signs, and then those little pains became bigger pains. Little problems became bigger problems. Don’t let this happen to you. Slow down. Listen to your body. Feel things out.
And as always, I’m not just talking about your martial arts practice here. I’m talking about your life practice. I’m not just talking about really physical pain. I’m also talking about your emotional pains.
You know, if someone in your family has a belief about you, and they know that trigger, and every holiday they say that little thing, they needle you with that little comment, and it’s that little pain inside of you, it constantly bothers you until 10 years goes by, 20 years goes by, and then it explodes. And you say, That’s it. I don’t want to hear that ever again. Stop saying that. Why do you always say that?
And then it becomes a big fight, a big pain. Maybe then it leads to a split. You don’t talk to that person for a couple of years. Maybe you’ve never gone back to talk to them or heal that wound. But trace it back. Where did it start?
It started with a little annoyance, a little pain. You didn’t say something about it. You didn’t make it right at that time. You didn’t make your comfort more important than the task of just get through dinner. Just let it go.
I’m not saying you should always call out everybody on everything at all times. But if you feel that pain with you over and over again, year after year, just know that those little pains will grow. They don’t necessarily get better. You’ve already given it a chance to get better on its own. If it’s not healing itself, then you’re going to have to take some type of action, something more serious than just whatever it is you’ve been doing.
I should also, before I wrap it up, you have to constantly update what I’m talking about here. Update your software, so to speak. You don’t think twice about it when it’s your phone, and it says, Oh, there’s a new version of whatever you’ve got to update. Update it.
Now the phone works better, hopefully. Always some bugs. That’s part of life, right? Pain is part of life. Bugs are part of life. But you keep running those updates, because that’s going to give you the best chance to maximize performance, right?
So I’m here to tell you that version 2.0, my 20s of Ando, is very different than version 3.0, very different than 4.0. Now I’m in version 5.0 of Ando. And if I’m not updating my software, I’m absolutely going to break down and blow up. Absolutely.
Certain relationships might blow up if I don’t update them. Certain techniques are going to blow up my body if I don’t improve my performance of them. Seriously, there’s no way that the way I used to punch in my 20s should be the same as I’m punching now in my 50s. And I don’t just mean what style of punch do you use and what do you look like when you punch. I don’t mean that.
I just mean in my body, how fast can it move? How far can it stretch? How explosive can it be? How fast can it recover? You have to update your expectations of what your body can do.
That doesn’t mean you’re just giving up, getting worse, and eroding. No, no, I mean developing. I mean refining. I mean evolving. It’s not necessarily a better punch that I’m throwing nowadays, but it’s a different punch. It’s the best punch that I can throw today compared to the punch I threw in my 20s.
It’s better in some ways and not as good in some ways. That’s okay. It’s still in development and always will be. The punch that I’m throwing today as 51, as a 51 year old, won’t be the same, I know, probably even into next week, let alone when I’m 60.
But this is the challenge for you too. Don’t think ever that you’ve got it.
Oh, can you do this technique? Oh yeah, I’ve got that. No, you’ve got it today. But if you keep trying to run that same software five years from now, ten years from now, you’re going to have more than bugs. You’re going to have a major malfunction. One day that system is not even going to boot up. You’re going to have a black screen of death or the pinwheel of death or it’s not good. Maybe smoke and an explosion.
So what’s the secret here? How do we avoid this? How do we minimize the problems? Again, pay attention. Don’t just focus on what you’re doing. Focus on how you’re doing things.
Change your expectations. Allow yourself to evolve and refine and develop. Stay vigilant.
Don’t accept what someone other people are telling you about what’s good for you. You have to really go deeper into your own self-knowledge, which is, to me, project one of martial arts. Knowledge of yourself and the knowledge of yourself in relating to other people, particularly people trying to hurt you. These are the two big projects.
So again, don’t just study your art. Study yourself and enjoy this journey. Don’t be afraid of what you discover. Don’t be afraid of, oh, I’m not as flexible. Don’t be afraid.
Oh, my bone density is changing. My hormones are changing. My energy is changing. My recovery time is changing. Enjoy it.
As long as you accept these changes and you keep practicing and find the information you need to manage it and alter it enough so you can still get what you want out of life and out of your practice, all the power to you. And if I can help, I will.
That’s why I also listen to podcasts and I also still seek out teachers because I never just think, I got it. I know what I’m doing. I only know what I’m doing based on what I’ve got today. But things are changing.
So I need to talk to some older teachers. I need to talk to people down the road. That’s what Sensei means, right? Someone born before you. Someone who’s got more experience than you. So that’s why I’m very excited in the move to the Raleigh area. I’m super excited not just to teach new students, but to be a new student to other teachers. Because that’s the cycle– you learn and then you share. At least that’s my cycle.
So there you go. Don’t let your little problems become big problems. Stay on guard at all times. In your martial arts practice and in your practice for a happy life.
All right, that’s it for today. I hope that rant was relatively pain-free for you. I’ve been sitting too long, so it hasn’t been pain-free for me. Time to get up and do some stretching.
Until I see you next time, remember, smiles up, my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword. Keep fighting for a happy life.
