u/Arctic---

I have been training for years and recently started to ramp training back up again. I have been doing live drills/mitts with one of my coaches.

The other day he started to incorporate active defense in the mitt work where he throws live punches back at me to remind me move my head, to be proactive about defense and to ease me back into sparring. During the drills, I probably ate 5-6 jabs, nothing super hard that rocked me, but the next day I felt mild concussion symptoms. Its been another day and its improved, but I have this 2/10 headache that comes and goes. Similar to hangover sort of headache for a lack of better terms.

In the past, I could do hard sparring and have little symptoms, but I have noticed maybe the last 3-5 times I have sparred/or took a glancing blow during mitts, that I would get these symptoms from light contact.

I have done martial arts my entire life, so I guess I maybe accumulated enough trauma that I no longer absorb the shots as well as I use to. I do fine DURING the sparring, but the next day I always feel off.

Just want to remind everyone to be careful. I am okay, I just have got to the point where it no longer makes sense to get hit anymore. I coach, I have a white collar job, and im not a professional fighter. I feel like a b***h, but I think its for good reason. I know I am tough, I don't need to prove anything to anyone.

I think I got lucky and caught on to this before anything happened, rather than to keep pushing and get permanently hurt. Might dabble back into BJJ, but I might just start doing triathlons or something else that doesn't involve fighting people.

Sorry for the long read.

I grew up doing TKD as a kid but I started grappling when I was like 12-13 as I was huge fan of the WEC/UFC starting back in middle school. I started practicing basic submissions with friends and trained in backyards until I was about 18. At around that age, I still lived at home and was able to start paying for training. I would skip most of the gi classes and just did nogi. I on and off trained from age 18 until like 25. I am now 31

I took several years off from combat sports and focused on Olympic weightlifting. Had my fun but got the urge to start training combat sports again. I ended up meeting a well known promotor and boxing trainer 3.5 years ago and have since become an assistant coach at the gym.

My hands have gotten pretty good, but if I have to be honest, I really don't like getting hit. I use my brain to make my living and I just know that getting hit in the head is not good for your cognition even if you don't get CTE. I am pretty careful about not sparring too much or recklessly, but its inevitable that you will receive some form of damage. Its like trying to grapple and expect to not get really sore sometimes. It WILL happen and no one thinks they will be the one with long term issues. I just am also not as hard as I use to be, I don't really enjoy knocking people out. I honestly feel bad when I hit someone. I am scared in physical confrontations that I knock someone down and they hit their head on the ground and die or something. I would much rather take someone down and choke them out. I like being able to control a situation, minimize damage to myself, and to be able to incapacitate someone with a much lower chance of permanent injuries.

There have been so many times in my Boxing sparring where I could have easily taken down my opponents, but instead you forced to the stand and bang with people. I think striking is really important to have on some level, thats why I started Boxing, but I think it often leads to unnecessary exchanges. I really got into the culture of Boxing and learned Boxing from the perspective of a Boxer, but taking them down and grappling was always in the back of my head.

A few months ago I grappled with one of my coaches who is in ex MMA fighter and I completely dominated him on the ground and it kind of gave me an ego boost and let me knew that I still have pretty solid grappling despite not training for awhile. I dream of rolling and certain positions. It just came much more natural to me than Boxing did. Boxing didnt start clicking until recently, where as I was competitive day one in BJJ.

I still am going to train my boxing, but I think I might be done hard sparring and am trying to spend more time in the grappling world.

Grappling is king and always will be and this is coming from a Boxing coach.

It use to be one of my favorite sandwiches but the last few times I have it, its hard to eat. The Chicken is no longer pre seasoned with the teriyaki sauce, so they just take unseasoned grilled chicken "cubes" and put the sauce on top. The chicken no longer has the seasoned texture it once had and it tastes so bland. I don't I am going to ever eat it again, its that bad. Its one of the sub of the day options and I only go to subway on the deal days.

They should either go back to the old recipe or completely replace it, it should be banned its so bad.

Bring back the crispy chicken!

I teach afterschool enrichment at several schools and last week I went into a middle school and probably heard "Shut the fuck up/ Fuck you" atleast 5 times while walking through the school.

The kids just have no respect for each other, the teachers, or anyone else and its way worse being the last few weeks of school because they know they will get away with a lot.

Today I had a 3rd grader tell her class mate to shut the fuck up, and when I told her that was unacceptable and she knows not to say it, she mentioned how her father lets her curse as home. How do you expect us to discipline your child when you let them speak like that at home.

Today we were doing a hands on activity and when I called my students to come grab their materials, they all ran up and knocked a bunch of stuff over. I think the school staff tries their best, but what can you do in those situations, especially when parents are not teaching their children basic etiquette. In my 2 hours of teaching today, I probably had 10 disruptions.

My kids that pay attention are super sweet and love to learn, its just every class has a handful of chronic disrupters where as it use to be a few per grade when I was growing up. 10 minutes of disciplining children is 10 minutes less that I am giving personalized attention and its not fair.

Two more weeks!

Whenever I am training a lot (4-5 days a week of sport specfic training plus 2 conditioning sessions and 2 strength sessions) I find that I get sick every 12 weeks or so with either a sinus infection or some kind of cold. I use to only get a sick once or twice a year.

It has me considering just dropping to 4 days a week and trimming the fat off my sessions because it seems to be regular thing. I guess I just don't tolerate high volume training as well as I wish I did. I use to be a weightlifter and I responded better to 3-4 days than I did 5-6.

Not sure the extra day is worth getting sick more often because it ends up making me take time off. I think grappling is obviously worse due to extended direct contact, but I also think striking can be unsanitary too. How often do you see your gym mates disinfecting their equipment? I guess I just have become a germaphobe due to repeated sickness.

Anything else you can do besides try to sleep more, eat a balanced diet, and minimize stress? Its driving me crazy how often I have to take a break.

Ever since the new Broadway interchange was installed, traffic has been severely fucked up in South Denver. They don't have any of the lights timed correctly at the Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi lights and often you will catch every single red light for no reason. They still allow the west turn cycle to go on despite not having the ability to turn that way. Over the course of a day I bet it wastes like 30 minutes, and over months its days of time wasted over complete laziness in the setup.

They also have the Iowa/Santa Fe exit closed which has diverted traffic to the Broadway, Mississippi or Evans Exits, making south Broadway traffic absolutely the worst I have ever seen it. During Rush Hour it gets backed up on I-25 and it takes multiple light cycles just to exit the interstate on to Broadway( which is no turn on red). If you are west of Broadway like off Delaware, Cherokee, Galapago, crossing left on to Broadway has taken me 5-10 minutes of waiting. Heading west on Evans over Santa Fe gets backed up to DU who's pedestrian cycle is so blatantly rigged for the DU kids that it will stop traffic for several minutes just to let 1 person cross the street.

I honestly do not think it has helped traffic whatsoever. Its almost faster to get off at Sante Fe or just to keep going to the University exit sometimes. Its driving me crazy and I can tell its driving others crazy too because of all the damn road rage in the area.

Its so bad that I will skip doing whatever I have to do until after 630 when it starts to slow down. I basically do not want to be driving between 430 and 630 in that area due to poor civil planning. Its a complete clusterfuck for no reason. Why they decided to do all of these things in the same area at the same time is completely stupid planning. Just like when the city does construction during rush hour, like you could easily do this early morning or later in the evening, how fucking stupid are they?