This is something new I am starting. The explanation will come in a future post, but it is my way to start sharing with the new generation of Gun Culture or GC 2.0.

Old Fart Advice #1: Let your body fully recover from an injury. Restart your regular activities slowly. You will not be young forever. 

I just got back from the doctor and even though I am an overweight smoker, the doctor was miffed that my lab work was better than his.  Truthfully, other than an occasional bout with acid reflux, I feel fine. However, all the crap that I pulled, ripped and mashed when I was a young pup, is coming up due and with interest.

From my mid teens to my mid 20s, I was a fool for exercise. If it wasn’t Team Handball, it was soccer of walking/running when I was in high school. When I went to college, I trained & played soccer at least 4 times a week and when the season was down, I would backpack  on my lonesome all over the nearby Andes.  I slowed down some when I came to the US for further studies but the bell finally rang when I was playing a friendly game of football where tore a rotator cuff.

It was not the first time I had an injury. In fact I have at least 4 torn muscles on my back, two in one leg, a thumb that got pulled out of the socket by an indoor soccer ball about 4 or 5 broken toes, 2 broken fingers and one honest-to-god-take-him-to-the-hospital concussion.  In all of them I thought I bounced back pretty fast and ignored the doctor’s recommendations.

I went on to choose more calmer activities so I went full blast 4×4 and exploring out of the way places on barely cut roads and sometimes not even that. I started to notice that my back would protest some as age kept crawling till the doctor again game me a warning to take it easy. I eventually did, but as I figured out a couple of years later, the damage was done and waiting for that perfect moment. Doing something totally unrelated to sports, I managed to crush three disks in my spine that required great amounts of pain killers and emergency surgery.

Why was I so stupid? Well, I was a member of the No Pain, No Gain generation. What they did not tell me is that pure, unadulterated pain like having vertebrae literally squeezing nerves is something so excruciating that I was willing to sacrifice babies and kittens for a shot of Demerol.  Then again I am sure that the Exercise Gurus were chugging pain killers themselves alongside other chemicals. and I was never into that crap.

As i said above, the bill for all that shit has come due and I am paying for it by not being as nimble or flexible as I should be.  That puts a dent on what I would like to do including firearms training.  It sucks.

I see the new generation going absolutely maniacal about stuff like CrossFit and I see myself in them.  I worry that the “Walk it off Cupcake” mentality may create a new generation of future damaged bodies that could have been prevented by doing exercise in a more moderate manner.

So be smart, do what you need to do to stay fit and not because you enjoy get all juiced in endorphins. If you break something, let it get fixed and return to slowly to your normal routine.  After 25, you heal, after 35, you patch and after 45 you are screwed and run with the bad part.