Transcript of the Podcast:

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Hey everybody, thanks for being here. This is our success training, and our fourth installment of students with special abilities and challenges. This one’s kind of special, because we’re going to be working on how parents can help their kids, and also how adults who are students or working in martial arts can work through temporary challenges.

So this one’s kind of unique. This is our fourth part, that’s going to be working on temporary challenges and temporary things that go on in somebody’s life. We’re going to go through the types of injuries, the types of challenges that people can go through and what to do about it.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Yes, sir.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

So we’ve got special guests, Mr. Dwayne Flees, and he’s a fourth degree black belt at Grand Rapids at KarateBuilt Grand Rapids and Senior Master Laura Sanborn. It says Master Sanborn there, but she’s a senior master seventh degree black belt.

So we’re going to talk first about, and you guys are going to help me out with this whole thing about the types of injuries that we deal with. And really we deal with all kinds of injuries and all kinds of temporary challenges. The prior three segments we’ve talked about more chronic, permanent challenges. Now we’re going to talk about major different types and as far as adults go, there’s… I’m trying to use a different marker here. We’ll see if we can make this work.

And my marker is going to be yellow I think for a little bit. And one of the challenges with markers. There we go. Okay, so we’ve got a red marker now. All right, so for adult challenges, and these could be for kids too, we’ve got a bunch of different ones. I’m going to read some off. Strains and sprains, fractures, post-surgery recovery, pregnancy and concussions.

So for all these strains, fractures, I’ll just write these down so we can go through each of them. Post-surgery. Pregnancy. Concussions. And these could be, I mean, one of our kids could have a strain, a fracture, a sprain, be post-surgery, not be pregnant, but have a concussion. So these could all be things that our kids could go through, but these are all things that for one of these injuries, you could choose not to do martial arts, but what we’d recommend is you continue doing it.

So let’s talk about strains and sprains. So how would somebody that has a strain, maybe their shoulder or their arm or their leg has one of these injuries. What would they do to compensate or how do you help them with compensating there when that’s the situation and when they’re doing such a physically demanding thing as martial arts?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

If it’s a leg injury, I’ve had them sit in a chair to do class and concentrate on the hand techniques and that type of motion. They’re still hitting targets and they’re still working with partners, but they’re doing it from a sitting position and not stressing the strain, so to speak. Not putting any weight on it but still able to participate in class pretty much completely by using their hands and doing all the hand techniques.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Yeah, that would work great if it’s a lower body. So lower body strains, they can do it from a sitting position. And then if it was an upper body strain, Mr. Flees, what would you say about if it’s an upper body strain so shoulders, arms?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

If they needed to have it in their sling or something, they could just have the sling and just use the other side and get that side stronger. Just limit their mobility for that so they don’t make it worse. Because a lot of times people don’t want to tell us that they have that injury until the middle of class after they’ve already hurt it more because they didn’t let us know.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

So limiting mobility or restricting mobility. But the other piece that I think is important is that you’re suggesting they’re still using their body. Sometimes the sprains can go on for a few weeks.

If they continue to exercise the other parts of their body, then their heart, the cardiovascular system, and they get a sympathetic response if they use their left arm, then their right arm is getting some neurotransmitters firing in the other part of their body. So they still get some development, even if it’s limited. The other thing I thought to include in here is the speed.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Yes, sir.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

It can be limited. So the speed can be limited. They don’t have to go as fast. And a lot of things that we do aren’t hitting pads or hitting things. They don’t have to be making contact. So if there’s a strain or a sprain, they can do the motion and get their coordination worked on rather than impact their joints, if there’s a joint issue.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

And especially when it’s something like if the arm hurts. If we have them kick a bag too early, then it’ll reverberate up through the arm and then they’re like, “Oh, well I can’t do that one either,” versus just kicking in the air or doing the techniques without actually making impact at all.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Or they can maybe hold a bag or use a bag for balance and that’ll help them with their coordinate through. They can still do the range of motion without the impact so that’s another way they can compensate. Okay. What about for fractures?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Same thing as for the strains and sprains really. Just the same type of thing. They might have a cast on.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Right. It would be very similar. Maybe even more extreme limited mobility and slower motion. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. They can have full range of motion with the other one, but then we make sure we listen to the doctor and the recommendation that the medical professionals have.

Occasionally I do find that doctors will say something like, “Restrict all motion and all movement,” and I never want to override a doctor. That’s certainly not our place to override a medical professional in any of these situations. That being said, we need to use our good judgment and if somebody’s got a hand fracture and they’re wearing a splint, there’s not too much of a reason why they couldn’t do physical leg movement or kicks or hands.

Most doctors are pretty good about not limiting movement and having somebody just lay in bed because they sprain their thumb maybe. But some doctors or some people think that if their kid or themselves or an adult has one injury that they limit the rest of their movement. That’s a good recipe for not just getting in worse shape, it’s a good recipe for losing momentum in somebody’s training.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Yes, sir.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

I find that a lot of times the doctor will just give them a one week limit, but then the person is like, “But it’s still broken. What do we do?” We’ll schedule a private lesson for the first lesson back after that to show them what they can do without trying to scare them in a class where they’re like, “Oh my gosh, but I can’t participate with everybody else.” “Come on in, we’ll show you what you can do. The doctor said a week, all right, take a week off. Like the doctor said.”

Obviously, we don’t want to contradict their doctor on that, but I don’t want it to extend into weeks and weeks and weeks where they do lose the momentum and they, “Well, but I’m not sure it’s better yet. Let me wait until I get the cast off and go back and see the doctor three weeks from now.” “Come on in, we’ll do a lesson. I’ll show you what you can do that’s not going to hurt and is not going to impact your injury.”

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

In today’s day and age, I found that it is more common for doctors to have people doing physical activity and they often don’t understand that we can make these adjustments in their martial arts training. That the doctor’s vision is that if they’re doing martial arts training, that they’re breaking bricks with their head and sparring,-

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Sparring.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

… and they’re in the octagon and there’s blood all over and they’re thrown to the wolves. They don’t realize what we can modify. So for all the parents that are listening to this, it’s important to understand, we have a lot of experience with helping through all these situations.

Post-surgery is really important. I mean, that’s true for me. As we’re recording this. I just had hand surgery a few weeks ago. I was using my other hand, and as soon as the doctor said it was okay and released, it was really consistent with my physical therapy for my hand, to be using it and punching and doing all the things that we would normally do. It may be another week or so before I would hit targets and get impact on the hand, but other than that, it actually is productive and in line with my physical therapy.

My physical therapist wouldn’t have any idea what martial arts means, so they wouldn’t know how to tell me to do martial arts because they wouldn’t know what I do. There’s a lot of different martial arts, so they wouldn’t have any way to compare if they were familiar with jujitsu versus Tae Kwon Do versus karate versus kung fu, they wouldn’t know how to compare any of those martial arts, but post-surgery this can be really valuable.

One of our other senior master nominees that just had ankle surgery, they continued training and continued doing things and then when they were fully recovered, they were able to test for seventh degree black belt recently. So post surgically, this can be very productive rather than have people sit and sit and sit and sit. That’s how people get out of practice.

They get out of shape and then it’s very, very, very hard for them to return to not just martial arts, but to return to the level of shape that they’d be in later.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Well, and a lot of times,-

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Go ahead guys.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

… a lot of times the point of having the surgery was to get back to what you were doing before and the sooner you can get back to that, and if you’re doing physical therapy that is congruent with what we do and what we do is functional, it’s exactly what they wanted to do. That’s why they went and got surgery so they could get back to doing it again.

But then again, if you put it off and you put it off just like any other exercise, if you put it off, you stop and we want to prevent that. We want to get them back in. We want them to be successful. We want the surgery to be successful in getting them back to the life that they want to have.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right, and that’s the same with us too. So I went to have knee surgery done and then when I got back in, it was a much faster recovery than what most people would have and I was able to return back to it sooner and push myself a little more to get through the physical therapy so that I could function properly. If I would’ve just sat around for eight weeks they wanted me to, that would’ve been really hard to get back in the groove of teaching classes and doing things.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Well, and I think a big point too would be even doing normal walking around and having a normal function. People that often have surgery and then they don’t do anything and follow more physical activity protocol, then they’re not as physically able even in day-to-day things and they kind of degenerate, especially as people get older. At this point we’re talking about adults.

Let’s talk about some of these other things so we don’t run out of time. One of the other things that’s listed here is pregnancy. Obviously that’s not a long-term thing. You’re only pregnant for a little while, but people very often train when they’re pregnant. Obviously it’s really easy to tell what restrictions we may have. They’re going to have restrictions in range of motion as they become further along in their pregnancy.

I think Master Sanborn, did you train when you were pregnant or did you already have your kids when you started?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

I already had my kids when I started, but I’ve known quite a few women who have trained while they were pregnant and pretty far along. They got all the way up to eight months or more that they continued training and they were in better shape for the pregnancy because they were exercising during the pregnancy as opposed to the sit around and not do anything because you’re pregnant.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Doctors want you to exercise when you’re pregnant. They encourage you and there’s nothing about any of the activity other than they don’t want impact on somebody when they’re pregnant, we restrict that part of the training when somebody’s pregnant. So by all means we can restrict the type of the training and that’s perfectly fine. There’s no reason people can’t train and test for their next rank and we just limit that part of the training for somebody that’s pregnant.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Yes, sir.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

All right, concussions. Concussions are something we rarely, I think we should probably note this here, I can’t think of in 35 years now of doing martial arts when somebody’s had a concussion. I’ve seen it at big national tournaments. I maybe have seen one person that might’ve had a concussion, but I remember this one time in Korea that that might’ve happened, but I’m not even sure if they had a concussion. So that’s probably tens of thousands of people in our schools. I can’t remember anybody that’s had a concussion. So this isn’t really an injury that’s prone to martial arts.

What we may have seen this happen with is somebody who’s outside of martial arts, they played football or they played a sport where they got a concussion and then we have to limit things the same kind of way. It’s very slow and limit things that require balance. But they need some rest before they would return, but basically they can return to activity right away as long as we limit the speed and the intensity of the training. Anything else to add with concussions, you guys?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

No, like you, I’ve never seen it from karate happening, but most of the time it’s from an outside sport that somebody came in from one. Then we just, again, you take that first week of taking things really slow and then you hop back in into watching carefully. If a kid had a concussion says, “I’ve got a headache.” All right, you’re going to sit down and do something a little slower and work on the life skills and work on the other parts of the stuff that we do.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

I think as instructors then we have to watch our pace and peak with them differently than the rest of the class. So sometimes they’ll want to push theirselves because they want to work out so much to stay in shape, but we really have to say, “No, no. You need to slow down. You’re getting a little wobbly.” Or we have to watch them to see what kind of things they’re doing so that we can be aware of do they need to take a break? Are they pushing theirself too hard? It’s just never fun when someone passes out on the mat.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

That’s right. But we just never see that in our classes. I think that’s a misconception of what we do in martial arts and that’s true across many other martial arts. For anybody listening, it just rarely happens that we get those types of injuries.

So for kids, let’s move on to kids. Some of the ones that are common growth plate injuries, repetitive motion injuries, soft tissue injuries, that would also be the same as sprains and strains. Concussions and head injuries. So sometimes they’re not just a concussion, but maybe somebody gets a cut on their head. And again, that’s often not from martial arts.

In fact, I would say 100% of the time in our experience, sometimes overuse injuries because they’re young and they’re growing so they end up getting some pain in their joints because they’re growing fractures and dislocations. This growth plate injury is also joint pain from growing and fractures and dislocations.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

I think for kids too, it would be phantom pain. We’re working on something they don’t enjoy, suddenly they develop a pain that’s not necessarily there.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

That’s a little bit of a psychological thing so then we keep them moving. Anyway, so these are somewhat the same. I would say overall these are a similar type of compensation that we do is we slow down the activity and then we limit repetition or limit intensity. I think we were talking in our meeting before this that we can put people in chairs, we can put people in different mobility situations and there’s a lot of ways to compensate for these types of things. Anything to add on this for kids?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

I’ve actually used a kid with a broken arm to be the leader. Teaching everybody, okay, what do you do when you only have one arm? Show them how you do it with just one arm when you’ve got to keep this one still and you’ve got to do a super strong technique. How do you do that? And that kid just was like, “I want to come to karate every day and show everybody how to do this because it was amazing.”

They got to be a leader and show everybody else that, “Yeah, it’s not going to slow me down. It’s not going to stop me because I’ve got a broken arm. I get to still be up in front. I got to do things and the rest of you, you have to do it exactly like me. Now that’s what we’re working on is just this one arm today because that’s all we’ve got.”

It was a super successful progression for that child to go from always just super active to, “Oh, I’ve only got one arm. What do I do now?” Well, you show everybody else what you do when you’re only have one arm and he was thrilled.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

So that’s a fantastic point, Senior Master, is that it’s not just about we limit and restrict their limited mobility and limit the intensity, but also we don’t limit anything else. We don’t limit anything that they can do. So what they can do, they can do. There’s a lot they can do. They can do all of our other training. They can be leaders. The ones that are on our leadership training that get to do speaking in public, they can do all the work on their life skills.

If they’re in our instructor training, they can do our instructor training. So that’s true of our instructors too. Sometimes I’ve had injuries when I first started out in teaching and I had to limit my mobility, but I had to learn to communicate better because maybe I had an injury so I couldn’t demonstrate the same as what I normally could. So that’s something that they can become better at and better at and better at. So we don’t limit anything else. We limit what we need to limit and nothing else.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right, and they can still do it. They can still do it and they can-

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

They can still do it and they can show other people that they can do it.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Yes. And sometimes we have to convince the parents that they can do it as well. Not so much the kids. Sometimes the parents think they can’t do it because of whatever one of these things is going on. But if we have their trust that they’re not going to get worse in the class while we’re teaching, then they can do it. So we want the parents to know that it’s okay.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

That the parents can know that they’re capable, and very frequently parents will know. For all the parents listening, you might think you’re protecting your kid by helping them by saying that, “Well, take it easy. Take it easy for the week.” For one, your kid will have more fun when they know that they can accomplish something like still do class.

They feel powerful because they may have their arm in a sling, but they can still do other stuff. As long as it doesn’t hurt them. We don’t want it to hurt them or injure them or have them feel pain during the class. But imagine your kid now, his arm in a sling and he could still, or she can still do the class and maybe as Senior Master Sandborn said, “Be a leader in class.” And oh my gosh, they did that in spite of them having an injury. Now they feel very powerful.

When some other challenge comes up in their life, that meant they had a challenge in one area, they can still do all the rest of the things that they may need to do or that they may want to do. Imagine how that changes in their psychology. So that’s something that we like to help parents with. And for all the parents listening, this is something that you can gift your child with that they’re capable.

That doesn’t mean push them over their limits or shove them into class when they’re crying. That’s something we help you with so that they’re encouraged and motivated to achieve even though there may be some challenges. So let’s talk a little bit about that and some psychological challenges. There’s always going to be some psychological challenges, some challenges that you have.

One would be frustration. People, adults and kids, we help you with frustration about the impatience of taking a while. I mean, I’m impatient that my hand isn’t healed yet. It was only two and a half weeks ago or three weeks ago that I had my hand surgery and I want to be doing everything I could do before and I don’t even want to have a scar on my hand. I want it to be all healed up. So we’re all frustrated and impatient that maybe an injury doesn’t get healed as fast as we want. The other might be fear of re-injury.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Yes.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

One component of that to me is making sure that we’re really clear on the status of the recovery. So we know that if somebody had a surgery and they’ve gotten over it, that they get really excellent confirmation from the doctor or medical professional that the injury is ready to go and they don’t have any restrictions. And that we as instructors and also the parents have a clear idea of what any limitations should be and what they shouldn’t be. So we know what is okay to do and what isn’t okay to do.

That way, even though we may have some fear, we can then support the adult student or support the parents and the kids in pushing themselves to whatever limits are appropriate for their injury. Anything to add on any of these guys?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Mostly it’s communication. A lot of work on communication in both directions tell them this is what we’re going to do. This is why it’s not the frustration in having them tell us, taking the time to sit down with them and find out what their concerns are and how we’re going to address them so that it’s all upfront and not just, “Oh, don’t worry about that. Nothing’s going to be wrong.” Clear communication makes all the difference on a lot of these.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

If you say nothing’s going to be wrong, but then we don’t have any clarity from what their restrictions are. We explain why nothing’s going to be wrong because you don’t have any restrictions and we’re going to ease into doing whatever activity they need to do, then everything, it’s going to be very frustrating or scary. Whereas if we gradually move into doing the activities that they’re going to come back to doing, then it’ll be comfortable and safe. It’ll feel safe.

The other one that I wanted to mention is the value of mental health. We do that a lot by helping them with all the different life skills that we work on, including confidence, communication, self-esteem, and honesty. Because we’re going to be really honest with everybody about what their status is so that we know what we’re restricting, know what we’re not going to restrict. Anything else to add on there guys?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

No, I think that pretty much covers it.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Okay. And for some temporary challenges, for our permanent challenges, we may modify the techniques, we may modify the material, we may change things. For temporary challenges we’ll tend to not do that. We’ll tend to leave everything the same, but they may just limit what they do. That would be the general rule. But even so, if somebody’s going to be six months through a broken leg, we might have them modify and do their curriculum differently for that six months. That might be what they test with.

They may test for black belt with a broken leg, but they’re going to test. We’re going to make it just as challenging, but in a different way. Just as hard, but in a different way. Just as significant, but in a different way. So that they can be proud of what they accomplished and we can be proud of what their new achievement is and everybody can be excited about what they did. Okay?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Yes, sir.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

That’s about all I had. We’re always going to make sure that safety is number one. That’s always going to be the most important concern. We’re going to be focused on that during class, no matter the idea here that we’re going to encourage people during these temporary challenges, during these permanent challenges to continue training with safety being our number one concern during that time.

That way they get the most benefit, they get the most productive lives, they get the most success with and always it be safe at the same time. Anything to wrap up with guys? Any final thoughts?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Nope. Safety number one is always right there.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

All right, to wrap up all this, we’ve covered all these things that we’ve done over the last few months. We’ve covered kids with physical challenges,. Kids with cognitive challenges. Adults, you can look back at podcast number one, two and three. And then finally wrapping up here with temporary challenges.

So we work with everybody in all these different situations along with our regular program and this is our goal to be able to take care of everybody in any of these situations because we all find ourself in one or other of these scenarios. So thanks a lot Mr. Flees. Thanks a lot Senior Master Sanborn for being here for all four of these and we look forward to the next one.

All right, thanks a lot everybody and-

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Thank you, sir.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

… I hope everybody has a great day.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Thanks.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

All right, thank you, sir. Bye-bye.