About me

Spondylolisthesis and BJJ: 

June 13th, 2016:
BJJ practitioner in my 40's with grade 1 Spondylolisthesis L4/L5 and pars fracture. I have 4 fantastic kids that keep me busy and spondylolisthesis has been no help in regards to them :( 
I'm documenting my journey with Spondylolisthesis because I'm not ready to give up on Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and I hope this might be helpful to someone else. I love teaching kids and adults Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and I hope to be able to continue doing so.  The purpose of this blog is to be a record of my Physical Therapy sessions for me to go back to and for anyone else that might want to learn from my experience.  If you are in a similar situation and want to contact me then leave a comment and I'll get back with you.  Or you can email me  steveshoeman at outlook dot com

Week 1 - the pain leading to the discovery.  

I have been an athlete most of my life and have been practicing BJJ (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) for a long time.  I had never heard of Spondylolisthesis before but was about become very familiar with it on a personal level.  I spend a good part of my working day sitting at a computer in my office.  I get up every once in a while and walk around but on this particular day I had just returned from a week of vacation and spend most of the day sitting catching up on email and work.  At the end of the day, I left my office and walked to my car.  On the way to my car my back started to feel a little sore.  No big deal I thought as I'd been sitting longer then usual that day.  This was a Monday.  As I drove my car it got worse and that was the beginning of a week long episode of low back pain.  The next day was Tuesday and I made an appointment with my chiropractor for a massage and an adjustment.  I didn't feel any better or worse and my back was still super tight and painful.  I could NOT bend over without severe pain.  I saw my chiropractor again on Thursday.  She recommended I get xrays of my low back since I had never done so and was in such pain.  Xray showed I have grade 1 Spondylolisthesis with a potential pars fracture (I think).  After viewing the xray and seeing that I was still in a lot of pain she recommended that I see a physician and see if some kind of anti-inflammatory might help.  I saw an MD and he prescribed prednisone (steroidal anti-inflammatory).  This seemed to help tremendously.  It was a 5 day course and by the end of the 5th day by pain was down considerably and only hurt when I arched back or if I sat and tried to put on my shoes.  This was still a huge improvement over the painful week I had just experienced.

Week 2 - relief and sadness. 

I'd put the pain from week 1 at an 8 out of 10.  The second week was 4 out of 10 and even less if I was walking slowly or laying down.  I had begun reading about Spondylolisthesis every night and trying to search forums and the internet for others that had it.  Specifically I was looking for BJJ and martial artists but wasn't having a lot of luck finding people and the few I did it was hard to contact them for more information.  I got an appointment with an Orthopedic surgeon for Friday.  He started talking about surgery with screws in my spine and I started to get really sad.  I asked about Physical therapy and he just brushed it off and I believe his words were "Nah."

Update - Aug 16th, 2016:  
Physical Therapy has been going very well.  I'm continuing to increase my sets, repetitions and times each week.  Overall the message I keep in my head is my back feels better then it did.  It doesn't feel great or back to normal but better - and that's a blessing! 
Last week was my first time back on the mat being able to grapple.  It was a single 5 minute round in BJJ sparing with a fellow brown belt that I trust.  We went lite and I was glad to be moving again.

Update - Nov 21st, 2016:
I have kept up with my Physical Therapy as you can see from reading my blog posts and I feel it has been very beneficial.  There have been a few times that I had to force myself to do the exercises that week but I imagine that is normal as things come up and sometimes you have other events on your mind.  Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training has been going well overall.  I am very aware of my back all the time during class.  I think about it during each roll and I make a strong effort to protect myself during each match.  I was advised by my physician not to do deep bridging while on my back which means I can't do a strong bridge to escape mount with out potentially hurting myself.  So I've focused on other mount escapes.  It is tough not being able to grapple as intense as I'd like to but I've used this time to try and slow it down and be more technical.  In the long run, that's probably better anyway in terms of keeping myself safe and staying on the mat.  Once again, I just continue to remind myself that I'm doing better then I was back in June and I'm still on the mat training!  Next update probably sometime in 2017 but I will continue to update the blog posts on my Home PT. 

For more updates check out this page.