Selfish or Dedicated????

Going in this Monday to have a detached ligament repaired on my hand. Four weeks in a hard cast. My plan is to train as best I can taking care not to affect my healing hand and not to thump anyone with the cast. Obviously I won't be a very good uke and will only be able to train certain techniques. Question is this: Am I being selfish by training in this condition and not offering myself as the best uke I can be? I want desperately not to loose a full month of training and thought that some outside feedback might be helpful.
Chris

What does your sensei think?

When my shoulder was dislocated i expected to do nothing but watch in the dojo until it healed but sensei had me doing one handed techniques right away.

Reagrding ukemi, if i could, i would take it as far as i could and then just sit down instead of rolling...

As someone who has trained with and without injuries, my recommendation is to let the injury heal. The primary reason is: its a martial art (heck, its a place with moving bodies....) therefore accidents happen. No matter how careful you are, you cannot guarantee that the person next to you won't throw his partner into your cast. And frankly the bulk and weight of your cast will be like a weird magnet.

Believe me, four weeks out of a life of training is nothing. Unless you are very much a beginner, you will learn a lot by watching classes during those weeks: consider that your shugyo. and best of luck!

For those of us less linguistically inclined... I know I've seen and heard the word before, but what exactly is shugyo?

Shugyo as I understand it means "training that fosters enlightenment".

What has confused me for the last 10 years is, what the hell is enlightenment?

Steve Nelson

Gotta say it... right or wrong. A student in my dojo who has always been naturally tallented at aikido recently had a motercycle accident which tore up his hand pretty bad. He was in a cast for over a month and, though at first all he did was watch, when he started practacing his use of displacement and positioning was forced to get better. Although I'm no expert, I really believe he improved in the time he was in the cast. I stress that he gave his arm enough time to heal that minor bumps and contact wouldn't harm him. Its just my two cents on the issue.

Chris,

Take a rest, read about aikido, watch class, help clean the dojo (where physically able). HEAL THYSELF.

lpc

I have to agree with Leslie on this. Take the time off, let it heal properly, and watch class. I've been watching class for the past 8 weeks or so due to a groin tear. I don't know how long you've been training, but where I'm at (3.5 years) in my training, I've picked up A LOT watching the classes. I'm seeing a lot of small things by watching them as opposed to doing them. Sort of like getting out of the box for a bit and watching it from a 3rd person viewpoint as opposed to 1st or 2nd person viewpoint. Time off isn't always a bad thing. Of course, I say all this knowing full well that my groin won't be healed completely for the upcoming seminar at our dojo next weekend. So do as I say, not as I do.