I know what you mean about rolling with the punches as we get older.
I noticed all kinds of symptoms as I was training and taking my 2nd Dan black belt test. I've experienced cramps in area I've never had cramps. Example, my calves would occassionaly cramp up even in my younger days, but I've never felt cramps in my shin, my abdominal, foot and toes!
I took in so much potassium and drinking so much fluids aside from just water but it didn't even make any difference. During our endurance part of our black belt test, my calves cramped up while I was doing situps, then my shin, and my toes cramped up. So I had to literally walk in between sets. I don't know if its bad curculation age, or over training (probably all of the above) but I was literrally cramping everywhere.
Prior to getting pregnant and having a child, I've never ever felt cramps doing crunches or situps. Well, now my upper ab muscles gets cramps right below my rib cage. Very uncomfortable feeling but its more tolerable than my calves cramping up. I think that is still my worst cramp pain. My toes and foot also cramp occassionally but they are not as bad as my calves cramping.
I'm sure its probably a combination of deficiency of potassium, fluids, and overtraining.
My back is junk and I am constantly in pain but lately, that has subsided.
I need to watch myself from time to time as I get older, I feel very frustrated with lack of endurance so I try to push myself constantly and some of those days, I know I probably over train (to sort of make of for some training days I may have missed)
With busy schedule juggling work, being a mommy and a wife, I think sometimes we try to do too many things that take us away from doing things for ourselves. I wish I could be training everyday and not deal with these frustrations and injurys that hinder our performances!
I use to always sprain my ankel by sort of "roll on my ankle". I use to spar a lot and somehow, either after sparring or before a match, I would do something really stupid (like getting up) and would roll on my ankle. Its wierd that aside from occassional bruise to the shin, I would never injure myself during any sparring matches, but its always been after outside of Taekwondo training that I would injur myself doing normal daily task, to a point where I would have to rest and take time off from training.
It sounds crazy but what I come to understand is that our body takes quite a beating while we are training so our muscles are tense and our hearts pumping overtime, and our body is naturally protecting us from potential injuries. But after our trainng, when our body is relaxed doing simple tasks such as walking, bending down to pick up clothes or stuff off from the floor, can cause injuries. In my case back aches, rolling on my ankles etc.
So it is really important to supplement and make healthy choices for our meals and try to eat more whole food with high nutrient levels. This seemed to resolve my lower back problem and spraining my ankle, but I still experience occasional muscle cramping (not tomy calves) but to my foot and toes and abs. Working on trying to resolve that by taking in more fluids and foods high in potassium like avacado, bananas, oranges, etc..
I'm learning to roll with the punches as well
roll with the punches.
