How My Knee Injury from BJJ Got Me Out Of The Rat Race
Given my athletic daily routine is composed of a movement practice, trail running and BJJ, this was bound to happen. However this injury taught me far more than my previous ones.
The crack
I was sparring with a blue-belt, and was taken down by surprise. My knee twisted with a heavy load. I heard a crack. Not the first time I was taken down, as a white-belt, this is how you learn. This time, I resisted, my feet were heavily planted in the mat. My knee ligament (MCL) ruptured, partially. Of course I was in pain. The worst part was the suffering, the grieving of all the missed trainings, my first BJJ fight I had to cancel, the trail race in the French Alpes I was training for.
Life was like sitting on a bench watching others compete and getting stronger. To make matters worse, I lost my daily source of endorphins since I couldn’t train. Pure misery.
The shift
It came while I was listening to a podcast: what causes stress is not the stressor itself but the thoughts we are caught in around what happened. I could see how I was attached to the identity of me being an athlete, an over-achiever, never quitting, just pushing through, the type-A perfectionist with a mission to fix the world.
After two months of rehab, I am finally back on my feet. I normalised my walking but I’m not running the distances I used to and I’ve stopped sparring. As I ease back into training, I am enjoying the rest and recovery my body and mind needed.
The possibility of peace
The biggest take away? I don’t buy into the stories in my head, I am not my thoughts, nor my emotions. The result is, instead of wasting energy trying to pull a brick wall, I let got of the rope: the wish it never happened and all the stories around failure. What this made available to me was a sense of peace. I rediscovered the joy of resting, studying and writing. Slow living. Even my inner dialogue towards my knee changed from “Why can’t you heal faster!” to “hey love, piano, piano” .
I’ll wrap up with a quote that is attributed to many (Lily Tomlin, Jackie Gleason, etc.):
“Even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.”
