When I was younger...
I never developed good habits at a time when my body was made of sterner stuff. I'd sleep a few hours because I was excited about an event and that made sleeping hard. Then I'd get up, and run out to the field because I'd missed the start of the thing. I'd fight for 6-8 hours with my (at the time) extremely shitty gear. On more then one occasion getting knocked around while out on the field with a few solid blows to the head. One time I'm pretty sure I got a mild concussion. I'd wander off hang out with friends after the event was over. Get some dinner and proceed with drinking and staying up late. The next day I'd sleep in a few hours, wake up, and be fine. I so can't do that anymore.
Because I could run around like a maniac I never developed any of the good habits you ought to while fighting to help keep my body from degrading. Bogun's made the statement that fighters age in dog years and I'm inclined to agree with him. I never learned to do the basic steps you go through in order to keep your body in good shape, so I'm stuck trying to learn them now at a time when I actually need them.
The few things I did right..
It's not all bad though. In spite of doing almost nothing good for myself, I also prevented a number of pretty bad things from happening to myself. Another friend/fighter broke his wrists and kept fighting with them, swapping from hand to hand as each wrist became more or less intact. One of the first rules I made for myself after watching that happen was to never fight on an injury. If you get injured but you rest and heal completely, in the long run, you'll spend a whole lot less time being broken then if you get back in the fray as soon as you can possibly do so.
After a particularly vicious blow to my hands I also started to wear gloves religiously spending hundreds of dollars over the years to make sure that at all times I had SOMETHING to cover them with. The initial blow that scarred me straight was catching the flat of a blade to my knuckles, which just happened to find a gap in the foam, meaning that I caught a bit of pipe from a full swing right to a knuckle. I spent the next 2 or 3 days unable to grip a pen with that hand while I waited for the swelling to come down. Around the same time I also got railed 3 times in the hand by a 12-6ish shot from a red. At this point I'm up to using modified lacrosse gloves (I've clipped off the bits around the wrist) which have done an excellent job of keeping my hands safe. There's plenty of extra padding on the top of the glove, but the actual fingertips have the profile of a much smaller glove, meaning that even though I fight florentine all the time I haven't felt like my ability to throw shots is diminished.
I've gone in and out of wearing kneepads depending on what the field I'm on looks like but ever since college I've been pretty adamant about at least OWNING a pair, especially when the fighting goes indoors. In addition to giving you added mobility from skidding on hard floors kneepads will protect your knee from crippling if you should happen to take a knee on a hazard out in a field. Storm, a fighter from weathertop wound up needing stitches and surgery when he took a knee while running full speed over drain cover. I've seen countless people mess up their knees by taking a knee hard. All it takes is a bit of momentum and the wrong bit of ground and you can take yourself out for a while or even do permanent injury.
Now that I'm a bit older...
There's certain shit that doesn't fly anymore. Getting 3 hours of sleep before an even just means I'm missing that event. I can by with something like 6 hours of sleep on a semi-regular basis but I can't short myself a nights sleep completely. When I actually get a reasonable amount of rest though I find that my time to recover from an event goes down considerably. I also need food to run on now so making sure I've had something to eat before an event starts is important... and I mean an actual meal worth of field, not a granola bar on the run. Eating well in advance of fighting is also important as food isn't going to metabolize well if you immediately start running around right after consuming it.
During the event keeping myself full of resources has also started to become a thing. That means that I don't wait all 6 to 8 hours before getting more calories into myself. That means making sure that I actually drink water, especially if I find that I am no longer sweating as that's one sure sign of dehydration with how I fight. It also means sunscreen so that I can last out there longer without going down from heat stroke. Wearing sunscreen also reduces my recovery time after events since my body doesn't have to repair my muscles AND my sunburn.
There's also prep one can do before and after fighting in the form of stretching or generally limbering up. I've finally gotten in the habit of trying to work out my shoulder before I actually start swinging stick, but you can also take the time to actively stretch things out between fight sessions. The benefit of being consistent about this activity is that you'll see additive gains. Instead of just making one's shoulder less crunchy you'll actually start to see an improvement in range of motion over time. Taking time to do cardio or weight lifting for one's fitness can also help make a day of fighting a bit easier on one's body.
Finally there's supplements that you can get that help with various aspects of the damage you do to yourself. A trick that I picked up from Bogun is pedialyte or equivalent beverage which helps with hydration. A trick I think I picked up from Sir Kyrian was drinking pickle juice from a jar of pickles. As far as chemical composition it's similar to what you'd get out of Gatorade but without all the added sugars and colors. I felt like that nearly saved me one chaos wars after I pushed myself too hard. From Princess Socrates I found out about using Vitamin C gummies to help clean out the garbage that your body leaves behind in/on your muscles after you fight. There are also supplements that you can get that will help with joints and bones but I haven't gotten that far myself yet.
This may not apply to you... yet
I don't think that I've put myself into such a state that I'm a good cautionary tale quite yet as I'm still trying to fight my way back but a few changes to my process ages ago and I'd probably be in better shape then I am now. Hell, a few changes in the opposite direction, like not wearing gloves, and I might not still be fighting now due to permanently mangled hands. I'm not sure what of this will apply to you dear reader but I leave it here for your consideration that so you've at least got the chance to take better care of yourself then I did. After all no one stays young forever. From what I've seen though, that doesn't have to stop us. While there are certainly some individuals (like kyrax) whose bodies don't let them fight like they used to, there's also plenty of older individuals (orion, winter, mordrach) who seem to still be pretty spry as they've gotten older. If you actually take care of yourself there's nothing stopping you from becoming an older fighter who still dominates the melee game. As for myself we'll see where I wind up landing. At this point I feel like it's the flip of a coin whether I make it back to my old short florentine blades self, or whether I continue down the path of developing my mid range florentine combined with sword and board to keep myself in the game.
The good news is, that I think regardless of the state of my body I'll be around for a while. After all, failing everything else, I can always retire to archery ;).
When aren't swearing and should be you are getting close to serious heat exhaustion/heat stroke. Don't get to that point.
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