For those of you whove been out of traiing before because of injuries?

Knee injury also, but i didn't wuss out even though my knee was busted and i continued training. It healed.

It really depends on the injury I think. Some will hamper your training partially while others will stop it totally. An example is a hand or shoulder injury. You can still practice your kicks and work the heavy bag kicking as well as work on your foot work while still resting that injured hand or shoulder. It takes less time to get back into the swing of things then but sometimes a person gets an injury where they can not work out or train at all. In those cases they should ease back into it and not let muscle memory, their desire and level of fitness over rule their brain. When I had to entirely lay off I would take a week to ten days and not throw anything more than half speed and power. Then I would throw things at three fourths power and speed for another week or so before really pushing myself physically. The injured area I would always pay special attention to and make sure not to take any foolish risks or do something stupid that would cause it to be re-injured or hamper the healing of it. Being in touch with and knowing your own body and how it reacts to different things is a plus in all this I think. Some people tend to ignore that and start back to fast, to soon, and to hard and things don't heal up so well then. I could usually be back in the swing of things in three to four weeks but I did have a few injuries that were more severe that gave me trouble for several months. One was a completly torn groin muscle and the other was broken ribs. I might add that those two injuries take especially a long time to heal since there is not good blood circulation in those areas. The blood flow tends to flow past those areas rather than within them. That is why professional athletes tend to continue to have problems with those types of injuries for quite a while usually.

Lots of good answers so far. I thought I would toss in my two cents too...

I have been out several times with fairly large problems (back injury, eye surgery, etc). Can never get back into it fast enough. But I never "took time off"... it is a way of life, so I found ways to keep going.

Make sure you don't do anything that will reinjure the area. Many people get into it a little too early and regret it after. We all do it because we hate to not be doing enough... but there are a million things that we can do to improve. Here are a few examples:

Focus on those things

a) you can do (not affected by the injury)

b) you need to do but do not normally spend enough time on (such as certain exercises, reading, etc)

c) that protect the injury (exercises, or defenses to protect the injury - as if injured in a fight)

and so on.

I rolled one day with a new guy who was 5 ft 10 and weighed 235 lbs. He was a wild country guy who played football and wrestled off and on most of his life. He had me in full mount and placed all of his weight on me. He would always roll at 100 %. Well I kept going for my escape by doing my best to get to my side.

After our roll was over I felt something wasn't right. I felt like the lower portion of ribs ,on my left side had been stabbed. I thought I had just pulled a muscle slightly. but day after day the pain kept getting worse and worse on the side of my ribs. It felt like crocop had kicked the side of my ribs.

I later found out I tore some rib cartilage by twisting repeatedly when I was trying to escape from full mount. That was the worst injury so far (knock on wood) that I have ever recieved. the pain also traveled to my back where my ribs are. It took about 2 1/2 to 3 months for me to fully heal. It would have healed quicker but I had to go to work and support my family and not rest. I couldn't train jiujitsu for about 2 months which really killed me.

I was out for 2 months, but I had been doing tkd for so long that many of the tehniques were ingrained in my brain anyway, so it took maybe 2-3 days to really get back into it.

I suffered a knee injury causing me not to do any grappling for a month. Took around 1-2 weeks to get back to where i was.

But its better then training with the injury.

I fractured my growth plate it took about 3 months to heal that time just worked on kicks and stances didn't really get going again till 5 months later.

sparring with a spontaneous and unpredictable and severely inexperienced partner who ended up falling on my knee, it took me about one and a half years before I was able to do most of the things I could do before the mishap. still get pain every once in a while cause I don't think it ever completely healed

This depends upon the type of injury:

*Broken knuckle

**No knuckle push-ups, more emphasis on kicks, etc.

*Bruised ribs

**No sit ups, leg raises, twisting, etc. I eased into different types of exercises/techniques as I healed up.

*Contusion on testicle (long story ...)

**No running, jumping, kicking, etc. for about a month.

**Mostly upper body workouts (light wgt. lifting, etc.) for about two months.

Bottom line?

*See a doctor, if you can, to make sure that you don't permanently hurt yourself (machismo sucks when your mobility is impacted decades later ...)

*Exercise around your injuries, if you can. You'll be back into the swing of things when you're able to train full-bore once you're totally healed up.

(;=]