Gerry's BJJ Blog

Gerry's BJJ Blog

Hi all,

After having a chat to Pete (who is our main instructor at BJJ Hobart) I decided to include another ongoing story here on my blog. That is the tale of my recovery...

I am currently recovering from a shoulder reconstruction to a dislocation about 2 years ago, without going into to many details of the injury I'll go as far as to say that my injury is the result of a poorly executed rolling crucifix choke (check this link if that means nothing to you; http://www.grapplearts.com/Rolling-Crucifix-Choke.html) . Anyways that was 2 years ago and since then I have had lots of aggravations to the injury and plenty of mis-diagnoses, but finally I have had the surgery.

In a nutshell, the process of the surgery was to dislocate my humorous from the socket and put a screw in to the edge of the socket to act as an anchor. This anchor was used to tie the damaged ligament back across the shoulder joint, really tight.

It is now nearly 2 months later (surgery was 21/08/2006) and I have reasonable mobility and strength, however I am a long way from strong yet. My surgeon said he envisages that I will be able to do full contact grappling again between February and April, so 6-8 months off.

To get you up to date, with the rehab process, the first month was off work sitting at home, watching TV and feeling sorry for myself, I also had to carefully work on my mobility in 3 plains; up in front, lifting out to the side and rotating my arm outwards at the shoulder. During that month I want from about 5% mobility to about 75% in all plains except the last one which probably got to about 30%. I have gotten far enough now to start isometrics in all the same plains. I have also been doing further flexibility work, including large circles in both directions and using a short pole (dubbed "the rehabilitator") to push my arm out to rotate my shoulder outwards.

I am due to go back to the physio on Friday for my next set of exercises and I have been told to expect things to get harder so I am a bit excited/nervous about it all, but I won't be rolling until I get fixed so I'll jump in head first... No, wait that is how I got hurt in the first place...

Anyways watch this space for my continued rehab story.