Back Breaker

Possibly the most cliché thing in martial arts is to accidently harm yourself on the run up to a belt test.  I've been lucky for all my other tests, but guess what?  This was my time.  

Bill and me were working out on Saturday by running through the test.  This has been our usual schedule for a couple of months now.  Near the end of Ill soo sik, during the spinning, jumping crescent kick my floor foot slipped and I slammed down on the floor before I new it.  It knocked the breath out of me and the pain was unbelievable.  My lower back was telling me it was time to have a spasm.  

We went through a few more things gamely and my back never spasmed, but the pain was continuing.  When I got home I was starting to panic that I'd thrown my whole test away.  This is my last week!  I could barely move without serious pain.  That night I took a muscle relaxer and slept 11 hours.  My back was doing great the next morning, but as the day progressed it kept creeping back.  

Bill let Colette and Andy know that I had an accident and we talked about the test weekend.  Apparently we can tell the proctor and the board that I'm messed up and it's still a go!  Talk about a less exciting test.  But it's given me hope.  

Then last night my buddy, who is a PT, ran me through an eval.  So my problem doesn't have anything related to a disk injury, but a small muscle that stabilizes the spine in the lumbar!  This is good and bad news.  The good is that at disk isn't injured, but to get the muscle to be happy in such a short time is horrible.  Tons of Ibuprofen, exercises and a TENs unit if we can find one.  He explained to me that we are trying to get that small injured muscle to release it's grip by doing range of motion exercises that tell it that's "fine".  But doing the cat/cow stuff I saw an immediately relief.  

I'll be doing this throughout the day and we'll see I do at class tonight.  Ugh.