Krav Maga Federation

[freedy]

I've actually noticed that my head is feeling a little cloudy the day after sparring. I did take some blows to the head but nothing that knocked me off my feet. I'm not nauseous or feeling sick, but I feel slightly disoriented/dizzy/having trouble focusing (4 on a scale of 1-10). If these are the signs of a mild concussion, what i'm more concerned about with are the long term effects and safety of continuing to train given the fact that blows to the head are unavoidable. I love training in Krav, but it seems that even with the head gear, gloves, mouthgaurds....i'm exposing myself to some potentially serious injuries. Obviously its better to train to get hit in class than in a real street fight, but street fights don't happen often....sparring in class does. Any advice, wisdom, words of encouragement someone can share?

[CemJim]

Delicate topic

In my experience, my going slow/easy on my partner works with some people, but does not with others. So though it is by no means a guarantee that your partner will likewise take it easy on you, it is at least partially effective. I usually start by trying to just touch my partner with my glove lightly.

On the other hand, going fast/punching hard is a sure-fire way of getting some payback.

Getting good is even better Especially at dodging punches.

I nowadays tell my partner to warn me if I'm hitting too hard, hoping they will be receptive to my feedback, too. But again, depends on the partner.

And yes, I know about that cloudy head feeling.

I've also noticed that an intimidated partner will do his best to defend himself, and that will usually be by punching back even harder.

[freedy]

Well the thing is I wasn't hit particularly hard. In fact i felt ok after class, it wasn't until waking up that i started feeling really bad. That being said, i'm worried that repeated "jerking" of the head, regardless of how hard it is.....could be causing serious damage to my brain that I may not recognize until it is irreversible.

Again, completely understand that we are training to prepare for life/death situations, but i'm worried that i'm likely destroying my brain over time in order to prepare for that unlikely confrontation. Need help deciding if the trade off is worth it by gathering as much info/experiences from others. Thanks to CemJim and in advance to all others for sharing their thoughts on this topic. Really on the fence with this one.

[coblo]

Maybe you need to ease up on the beers after class.

You are right to be concerned about the amount of damage taken in training, especially to your noggin. This is why we try to avoid taking impact. Also, we are told to spar slowly. The slower you are getting hit, the less negative effect on your brain (more positive effect from learning). All athletic practice carries risks, I'm comfortable with ours when we practice properly.

I'm serious about the beer. Your cloudy head the next day may just be from dehydration. Especially in the summer you need to make sure to drink a lot of water when you exercise this much. Try to drink enough that your piss isn't yellow. Ask David how much water he drinks a day. Alcohol is a diuretic, which means it dehydrates you, in addition to the usual hangover effect.

Getting enough sleep is also important to help your body regenerate after a tough workout.
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Lil guy smiling that big... must practice Krav Maga.

[freedy]

Don't think this one is dehydration (although it's possible). I'm pretty good with sports nutrition and drink probably close to a gallon of water a day, and I don't drink alcohol after exercise, ever. Obviously the goal is to avoid getting hit but in training to do so, being hit is unavoidable. I'm beginning to guess it's just the nature of the beast.

[VictorNYC01]

Sports nutrition ( supplements ) and even sports drinks that contain refined sugars require more hydration. A gallon a day is fine—for off days. If you train with us in NYC, given recent weather, you might put aside an extra gallon for the days you show up to class.

Beyond that, there's how you spar—and how your opponent responds in kind. As Rhon will say, would you be ok being hit with the kind of force you're dispensing? For me the key was in figuring out how to get people to be patient with me and my relative newness to it, and developing enough trust. So I would go slow from the start and stay slow through the round, if the other person seemed to speed up, we'd stop and reset before continuing.
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"Identify what matters. Then take it."

[JWL3]

I wear my headgear in class, not because of the headaches, but because my optometrist (who's been wearing one for 20 years of Tae Kwon Do recommends it. People who are nearsighted have thinner retinas and a higher chance of tearing it, causing floaters that never go away. I got hit hard in class several times (by the same guy who was going too hard, by the way) and developed floaters in both eyes. So now, I always wear the headgear, even if it's hot, uncomfortable, blocks my vision, makes me look like a wuss.

I know exactly what you're talking about though with the wooziness and headaches. I get that after taking a few hard hits. But the headgear helps for sure.

[freedy]

What do you mean by floaters? Those sound like the sort of thing i'm worried about. Yes even with the headgear i get woozy. And although I know it's a temporary feeling and I am ok a few days later....i'm worried that later on in life this may lead to problems...(Alzheimer's, Parkinsons, Depression, etc)

[Giantkiller]

If you feel unsteady, or a lot of motion makes you dizzy, you could also have a vestibular (inner ear) problem. This can be caused by a blow to the head, but also by a virus, drug interaction and other things.

Floaters are gray lines and spots that look as though they are moving across your line of vision, making it cloudy. Many nearsighted people have them, not sure if they can develop solely because of punches. If so, the punches would probably have to hit the eye directly.

[2pin]

Hi Freedy,

When you read this string of responses you must understand everyone is just trying to be helpful but no one here is a doctor. We all have our own interpretations and often relate them to our past experiences. I have some of my own ideas that might be possible but not definite. First let me rule out what my thoughts are.

When people sweat in the studio, get excited, get nervous, get scared there are amino acids that are released from our pores in our sweat. These amino-acids over time convert into ammonia and then later into nitrogen. These ammonia particles get on the mat, get on our shoes, get on our clothes and finally get on our gloves. The ones that get on our gloves and on our shoes are harder to remove than the ones that get on the mat and our clothes.

Now as I said before this is just a thought and my conclusion is only good if it applies to you.

Continuing on with my theory, when you are boxing and breathing in these natural released amino-acids it can make you feel a bit disorientated and unstable. So simultaneously you could be breathing in these particles and getting hit at the same time..hence making the brain feel cloudy.

Freedy, I recommend you make a journal record for you own data and evaluate your condition and feeling after every class. Perhaps scale your feeling from 1-10 regardless if you had boxing in class or not. Finally Freedy as I said before no one is a doctor or even knows exactly what you are experiencing, including myself, so that being said I strongly recommend you see a doctor if you experience these symptoms again.

Good luck and I hope you don't experience this again....
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"Fight First learn to walk later" 2pin ......

[freedy]

Thanks 2pin. I understand that none of these replies are from Doctors but it helps to hear other peoples experiences. I think the journal idea might actually be of use also.

[VictorNYC01]

First and foremost, if you think you have developed any medical situation at any time for any activity, it's good get it checked out by a doctor asap and be done with it. What follows is beyond that piece of common sense advice.

With this post, as you can already see, you got one of two things:
1. opinions, from people of varying degrees of qualification in these matters...usually about their own experience and what they brought to the mat when they sparred.
2. no real opinions, just a lot of "could be this" or "could be that".

Either way, not useful to you when you're standing in front of someone the next time you're in class, hopefully with your hands up.

Very bluntly, if you find that this is happening with every time/most times you spar, then consider that the common denominator in all your sparring sessions is...you.

Journal shm-ournal. Focusing on the symptom and writing about it can't be as useful as focusing on the cause, which is a harder pill to swallow in this case: people generally don't like to consider that it would likely be the result of (off the mat) dehydration/diet etc or (on the mat) accelerating the pace (*very* common when starting out) and given license/indication to their sparring partner to respond in kind.

With the amount of emphasis there is at the school on safety every time we spar at any level of class, and the fact that you do wear headgear already(a good thing), you would do well to start paying attention to these things and significantly reduce your probability of any kind of injury issue.

Good luck.
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"Identify what matters. Then take it."

[David]

You mentioned Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and depression among the things you are concerned you will develop due to the impact you take in training. The most knowledgeable people in the world on this subject know very little about it that is of any value at this point in time. There is no concrete evidence pointing to Alzheimer's or Parkinson's resulting from head trauma, although it is being studied for a reason and is certainly a distinct possibility. I have never heard of depression being included in any study on this subject.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is the most common issue that has been reported among the group of people who are generally the subject of any studies on this. These people are professional boxers, mixed martial artists and football players (the concerns spread farther than this, to soldiers and people who simply develop brain conditions without anything to point to as a possible cause aside from age). Football players by a wide margin suffer from concussions more frequently than athletes in other sports. There is however no more information available about any link between impact to the head and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy than there is on anything else.

It is also unknown how much the frequency of blows taken to the head factors into any possible damage from it and how severe a blow would need to be to in order cause damage at all.

There can be tremendous differences between the health of peoples brains, whether we are talking about combat athletes, football players, a person with a normal relatively normal lifestyle, or soldiers, even among people who have taken similar amounts of apparent damage over the course of their lives/careers. It hasn't been discovered yet whether these differences are caused by genetics, environmental factors, or anything else.

Right now the "professional fighters brain health study" has nearly 200 participants evenly split between boxers and mixed martial artists who have volunteered to be studied. The goal of the study, seems to be two different things. one being to find ways of detecting the damage to the brain that would eventually cause diseases at the earliest stages, and the other being to find ways to treat it before damage to structures in the brain progresses to a noticeable stage.

The people being studied are professional athletes for a reason. They train intensely on a near daily basis and regularly compete against one another in an environment where any impact they take will 100% of the force that they or their opponent have the ability to generate, which tends to be a lot.

The impact or frequency of impact that anyone in our school takes in training can't even be compared to that which a professional athlete takes in training and competition. The punches that you will take boxing slowly (which at your level should be the only way you box) with people who, just like you, are really just learning to fight, are not going to be concussive blows.

Sparring is a part of our curriculum and a necessary part of your progression in the art, but you will never be forced in class to spar at a speed that your not comfortable with and a student getting hurt is not okay with any instructor, so if the people who you work with are working harder than you want to work then you have to tell them, and if they don't listen then you need to tell your instructor. I understand that you weren't complaining about anyone sparring too hard, just concerned about the way you feel afterward.

You mentioned being "slightly disoriented/dizzy/having trouble focusing" as your symptoms. When people develop the brain conditions that you mentioned being concerned about there are no symptoms until it is really far too late, with our current lack of knowledge on this subject, to do anything about it. It takes many, many years for the symptoms of these diseases to show up. So if you are developing one of these conditions you probably wouldn't know yet, unless you have been for quite some time (I don't know how old you are, but unless you are at a fairly advanced age you probably don't need to worry about it). If this were the case then it certainly wouldn't be a result of your training.

These symptoms are not necessarily specific to any one thing, So I can't help with finding out exactly what is causing them. But there is a reason that so many people have said that they relate to these feelings. When you train, and you really push your body, it drains you. Your body will change and adjust and it will get easier to do the things you do now, but if you continue to push yourself and always try to do more then I would not be surprised to hear in the future that it has become normal for you to feel like that every now and then. And sometimes the effects of that fatigue can last longer than just until you go to sleep that night.

It is possible that you, just like anyone else, may be developing some sort of brain condition. But not likely from your time training. If you are truly concerned about this then you should absolutely see a doctor about it, maybe you'll discover something that you'll be very glad you found out early. But I doubt it.

I know that the fact that not much is known about this subject is not really a comforting thing if this is a concern of yours, but based on what is known there is very little likelihood that anything your feeling is a sign of a brain injury caused by your training. I hope that you continue your training and remain healthy.

[racerx]

David - depression seems to be frequently mentioned in connection with concussions and CTE, sometimes in studies (for example, see: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080118115428.htm) and often in anecdotal reports by athletes who have also suffered concussions. The issue recently came into the spotlight again when former NFL star Junior Seau committed suicide. You make a good point about the difference between the impacts involved in professional sports, especially something as violent as football, and those a person is likely to encounter at the school.

As for the original poster - I've sometimes felt the same way after a sparring session. However, I've also felt the same way after other sustained physical effort (demanding bike rides, hikes, etc.). So I attributed the post-sparring feeling mainly to being physically drained. If you're at all concerned about it (and you obviously are), you should consult a doctor, but I would make sure it's one that knows about sports and won't just react in horror that you're exposing yourself to the impacts of martial arts/self defense training.

[freedy]

Wanted to just throw a thanks to David for taking the time to provide the detailed response that he did. This is my first time participating in any form of contact art/sport (as well as anything as physically demanding as boxing) and with concussions in the spotlight due to the NFL lawsuits, it's hard to tell if what i'm experiencing is normal for beginners or something else. If I continue to train, it's encouraging to hear the instructors take on this issue (regardless of whether or not medical evidence exists for any of my concerns).

If there is a partner we feel more comfortable training with during boxing, would we be forced to switch? or would the instructors be ok with us choosing to continue sparring with the same person while everyone else rotates? Hard to establish whether or not two students are on the same page after each switch, at least not before taking a hard fist to the face.