Distraction Vs Discipline

I haven’t written a blog for a while because, quite simply, I haven’t been in the right place.

Writing about my journey was, and still is, a big part of making sense of what I’m doing and where I’m at with my sport and life. Writing what I felt and thought about was a way of making it real- something tangible I can look back at and learn from, or use to simply remind myself of how far I’ve come. However, I didn’t feel as though sharing that process was a good idea, because as much as writing about where I’m at internally and externally was good for me, it also took me out of the moment- putting me outside of my self, analysing why and how I am where I am and what I need to do to get to the next level… instead of just doing it. Analysing your actions and thoughts are important, but so is living your life and enjoying what’s in front of you at that moment, without being overly critical or overthinking.

Distraction Vs Discipline. Two very powerful words when talking about achieving a long term goal. ‘Distraction’ carries very negative connotations, given the context of goals; people think a distraction is something that steals your attention from what you should be doing- procrastinating and overall, making you less productive when trying to get on with daily routines. As well as this, ‘discipline’ often feels like a million miles away from your current self. Perhaps, most of you reading this wouldn’t describe yourself as ‘disciplined’- that word probably wouldn’t even cross your mind, because we’re all largely disconnected from its true meaning.

I believe both words can be your best friend, if you’re able to simply use them in a way propels, rather than detracts.

Distraction.

When I decided to dedicate myself to my training as much as I possibly could, around my current college/work schedule, I decided I would change the way I use the word ‘distraction’ in order to get my intended results. Instead of using it to describe getting pulled away from my goals, e.g staying up late on my phone, meant I couldn’t wake up early to go for a morning jog- I used it to describe pushing me forward, which of course, became my reality. I would literally fill the place of negative distraction with a positive spin. Instead, I would use going to the gym as the positive distraction from the negative of staying out late with my friends.

Discipline.

I feel like this word has negative connotations, because as children we get told off at school and by our parents- the supposedly definitive authorities on discipline. They instill us with what it means to be disciplined, which becomes closely connected to our wrong doings so also, to a feeling of powerlessness. But how can we blame ourselves for such a thought when the definition of discipline is ‘the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behaviour, using punishment to correct disobedience’. This view has become our social norm, so much so, that we overlook its other meanings. Actually, discipline means you are in control- not powerless at all. It is a conscious effort that takes time to build- it’s all a process. I started small, such as doing the smallest chores and jobs when I knew they needed doing, for instance: putting my washing out to dry- then and there, instead of saying “I’ll do it later”. Developing discipline is something we’re all capable of doing, its a subtle process; challenge yourself by actually waking up and getting out of bed as soon as your alarm goes off. Such a start to the day is powerful, you will feel as though you want to get on with the day, instead of rolling out of bed 15 minutes late. Create that feelings of accomplishment daily- doing what needs to be done there and then.

These two words have the power to create and build the you that can achieve your goals.

Use them wisely.

Competition Ready

Yesterday I competed in Belgium. This officially marks the beginning of my competitive judo career that was put on hold for the last couple of years. 

I was competing in the afternoon so the morning leading up to my fights was a bit of an emotional roller coaster. Fear, expectations of myself, excitement and especially nerves. When I was called up I honestly didn’t know what to expect, I felt like a complete beginner. 

Competing is a completely different situation to training/preparing, as Jo (Coach), made very clear to me. It’s more than just the techniques and methods I’ve been repeating and trying to perfect continuously over the last nine years. It’s a combination of things that constantly change: your  environment, a busy sports hall or stadium filled with hundreds/thousands of people, that may or may not be rooting for you to win, your physical and mental state on the day; you may be feeling a bit sluggish/unresponsive because you couldn’t fall asleep sooner the previous night, even just a piece of food that you ate a couple hours before that didn’t quite sit properly with you, you may have let your thoughts wander to a time you just lost out on a medal at your last event or a specific time you couldn’t quite pull off a technique successfully, the fear of the unknown, during training you know what to expect, you know what and who you are up against, you are in greater control of many different variables. In competition you do not have that control. So much is unknown to you, and that, of course, comes with its own set of challenges, challenges that could have a negative knock-on effect on your whole performance. 

Today I won my first fight, won my second fight but lost my third, Initially I reacted quite badly to the loss, not because I lost but because I felt I didn’t give that fight my 100%. Having lost that fight, my mindset was dramatically thrown off, and drifted towards more negative thought processes. I had one more fight left and decided even if I lost or won this one I wouldn’t mind too much as long as it was an improvement on the third fight. It was an improvement, even though I lost, at least I fought till the end. It’s so easy when things start to go wrong in a fight to give up at that point. It may only be half way through but you’ve lost the minute you give up mentally. 

I came out of the event with a bronze medal.

All things considered, I’ve done quite well, I fought well and met personal targets throughout and the biggest highlight; it confirmed my knee is strong enough for competitive Judo. A very important part to improving is recognising credit must be paid to yourself where deserved and today I feel as though it is deserved.

The list of factors contributing to the outcome are near endless, meaning to succeed it’s not all about controlling these factors, some of which can be controlled of course but it’s learning to become adaptable, versatile and ready for many different possibilities, both physically and mentally.

All thoughts and energies are now fully focused on training and competitions to come!

My story

Hi, my names Blake, I’m 17 years old, an aspiring Olympic athlete and I’m going to tell you my story.

I do judo. I began when I was about 7/8 years old and fell in love with it from the beginning. When I won my first ever competition, about 6 months into my judo career, I was so excited that I slept with the trophy in my arms all that night. That trophy is still sitting above my bed nine years later.

Judo became more than a hobby to me very quickly. Never too fond of school, I have always preferred being on the judo mat, rather than worrying about my school grades. Over the years, I have done reasonably well, winning medals and trophies in the UK, as well as across Europe – that’s one of the great things about judo, you get to see so many different countries. I am most proud of winning a silver medal at the British National Championships in 2011, a feeling I remember to this day. For me, that medal was as much a medal for believing in myself, as it was a medal for judo.

Once I was old enough, I was selected for the England squad, about  12 years old.  I was so proud to be able to get my England tracksuit but, as many of my older squad mates reminded me, getting selected is the easy bit, remaining in the squad and performing consistently at the level expected of you is the hard part.

But, with support from my club coach, Jo Crowley (Ealing Judo Club), sure enough I managed to keep my place in the squad, so the next challenge was to make into the England Talent Development squad (ETD). ETD, in its simplest form is an elite squad inside of an elite squad, where the England coaches give you a bit of extra training and, hopefully, you then get priority when players are being selected for competitions. That was exactly where I wanted to be. I worked very hard and managed to get selected for ETD at my first attempt, which was a huge achievement for me at that age. Although I was the youngest member of the ETD, I was determined that this would be the start of great things for my judo.

However, it turned out to be the moment when everything went downhill and, as a result, I had to face some serious physical, emotional and mental difficulties.

To give you some background knowledge; in 2012, a year after my national medal and my place in the England squad, I suffered 2 quite serious  head injuries, leaving me both times with a concussion, one of which gave me minor speech difficulties, a mild stutter that I gradually overcame; in 2013, I suffered a dislocated shoulder and damaged ligaments in the other shoulder, probably induced from over compensating during my recovery from my dislocated shoulder.

When I did return to judo, about mid-late 2013, I wasn’t performing how I wanted to be due to lack of physical strength but also mental strength. At this age you don’t realise how important both are in achieving success. You can be as strong as an ox but, if you don’t believe in yourself, you’ll never win the medals. So I began to slip into a very negative place of getting injured, repaired, re-injured,  competing and not achieving. It was a downward a cycle. Because I didn’t believe in me, I thought the squad selectors didn’t believe in me and so I was convinced that I would be dropped from the squad. By the skin of my teeth I’m sure, I managed to remain in the squad and get into the ETD as stated.

So spirits high again, I went along to my first ever  ETD training weekend, but, less than a month after being selected, I seriously dislocated my left knee…

But this was no minor injury. I continued to dislocate my knee training, no matter the intensity. If I was going hard, it dislocated. If I took it easy, it dislocated. Something needed to be done.My GP referred me to a knee specialist in early 2014 who simply told me I would not be able to carry on doing judo without an operation.

And this was a massive operation this operation. It’s called a 4 in 1 knee reconstruction, where ligaments, tendons, muscles are all repaired and realigned. It’s basically rebuilding the whole framework around the knee and it’s an operation that has a  full recovery period of 2+ years. As far as we knew, it had never been done to an elite athlete, so of course there was no guarantee of ever returning. But I had faith in my surgeon, Mr Ramachandron at Royal London and I knew that I had to do go through with this operation, no matter what, because for the life of me i could not quit judo.

I agreed to the procedure and waited till November 17th of that year(2014) – operation time.

November 17th  arrived, and, lying in the hospital bed waiting for my operation, a million thoughts and outcomes flying through my head at once. I was terrified but excited, panicking but trying to remain calm. By this time I couldn’t even run because of the state of my knee, so I knew it had to be done. That’s what I tried my best to focus on.

Mr Ramachandran told me he’d put me under general anesthetic, as well as an epidural, which numbs anything below the waist, so I wasn’t going to consciously feel anything. I went under about 1.PM and woke up at about 6.PM, I remember feeling relieved it was done and excited to see what my leg looked like. I was told that i would only have to spend the night at hospital and return back to school within a week. I ended up not being able to leave the hospital for 3 nights, which drove me crazy  and missed 8 weeks of school, my last year of school, which of course means 8 weeks of the most important school year. By this time in my life it was very difficult to see any positives anywhere.

My operation made daily life nearly impossible, at least by myself. I couldn’t do the simplest of things, like get out of bed, wash or even use the toilet, it honestly felt as though the person i was before this operation was taken from me and replaced with a body that was completely alien. I hated it, everything! I was bed bound for about 3 weeks and it felt like every single door was just completely closed on me , the first night of returning from the hospital I cried, intensely. I physically wasn’t allowed to be and do the things I believed made me, me. The scariest thing was not knowing if I could ever return to doing those things that made me, me.

I returned back to school in January, which was a massive milestone as I hardly got to see the outside world while recovering for the first few months. Things weren’t any easier there but at least my life was regaining a little bit of meaning.

I did ICT at the time and was put in for early entry exam which meant I could do my GCSE exam in January, which is the option I took. The day of the exam was on the same day as the day the leg brace had to wear for 8 weeks would be removed. This was to be a party day – I’d get one GCSE put of the way AND finally start my physiotherapy. It was raining on the day of the exam and literally as I walking into the hall to take the exam I slipped on the wood and fell on my bad leg.

The ambulance took me straight to Mr Ramachandran at Royal London who sent me straight down to x-ray. Worst fears confirmed: I’d broken my patella!

I had to wear the leg brace that should have been coming off that same day, for another 4 weeks. Then to make matters even worse, when I went back for my second x-ray after the 4 weeks, the bone hadn’t repaired itself meaning a second operation was required. And by the way, I ended up having to drop ICT as a subject because of this, which just added to my living nightmare. I can honestly say at this point I thought I was completely done, it just wasn’t meant to be.

But looking back, the Gods were truly on my side.

Literally during the time I was sent downstairs to get my x-ray, a patient cancelled their operation, for the following Monday, which meant instead of me having to wait another 5-6 months for an operation I only had to wait 4 days. And during that operation all the scar tissue that built up from the previous operation and 13 weeks without bending my knee, was able to be broken down, which meant because of the operation my overall recovery time was shortened by 6-8 months (that’s the time it would have taken for me to just be able to break down the huge amount of scar tissue).

So by my 16th birthday, February 11th 2015 i was able to walk again, on crutches, another massive milestone.

After that my whole perspective of my situation changed, I truly believed, from that point on wards, everything has a meaning. We might not be able to see or understand straight away but there is a meaning to stuff that happens to us.

Now my focus was on getting back to Judo no matter what.

I began with boring little excises daily, but i couldn’t do anymore than that. To put it into real terms, I didn’t even have the muscle to lift my leg from the ground, while lying on my back. It took me about a  month to be able to walk without crutches completely and took me about another 3 weeks to be able to squat. I eventually, by  April 2015, started lifting weights, such as weighted squats, split squats etc.

My amazing physio, Dylan Morrissey at Mile End Hospital, has a machine that measures muscular output. When I began in April 2015, my strength deficit  was 85%, meaning in simple terms my left leg was 85% weaker than my right leg. I set myself goals every month to gradually decrease that deficit, which I can tell you for free cost me a lot of time, energy and focus, but I knew that where I was, was not where I wanted to be forever and so the only way out of that problem was through boring rehab exercises. So I kept on doing what I was doing, following Dylan’s strict work-out schedules, gradually increasing the weight to decrease the deficit. By November 2015 I was leg pressing 91.kg on my left leg alone, so I set myself a goal of leg pressing 100.kg by the end of December, but by the start of January 2016 I was leg pressing 109.kg and my deficit had fallen to 38% in less than a year.

I have been able to return to what i love doing, Judo, and have still been doing my physiotherapy every week to continuously bring down my deficit, which is currently at 17% as of August 2016. I leave for a competition in Belgium today, and, as of October 1st 2016, this marks my first competition in over 2 and half years.

Dreams combined with goals become your reality!

Wish me luck!

Set yourself goals step by step, that make you the best version of you and achieve those goals, step by step.As each step turns into one long exciting journey, a journey whereby you decide the destination for yourself. And never forget that there is always, always light at the end of the tunnel!