So, I had a few ideas for my Chronicles....but I was surfing the net and saw a article about Jackie Chan’s injuries and figured I would take a closer look. To date Jackie has had: A broke Ankle from Rumble in the Bronx, A "knee injury" from City hunter, Hand injury...while bouncing on a hotel bed?, A back injury from Police story, a dislocated sternum during operation Condor, Dislocated shoulder during City hunter, "Facial injury" During "highbinder"?, Three broken noses, a "brow ridge injury" during Drunken master and a skull injury during armor of the gods.
Not a bad record all and all! But I got to thinking, and I kick his Butt in the category of gory...er, getting your butt handed to you in the injury department!
Lets see, from top to bottom:
Broken toes: During the old days of Karate if you kicked at a guy you could expect them to try and break your toes with their elbows or forearms. I got caught a few times with this and once in Judo I tried to do an inside leg-throw and connected toes to shin and snapped two of my toes straight back. I was teaching once, a two hour long class, broke my toes warming up and had to snap them back into place, tape them and teach…that was NOT fun!
broken ankle(s), have now broken my left ankle twice and my right four times. Most of the time it is while I run or when I landed funny in Gymnastics….which come to think of it really messed up my ankles in the first place! Once I was stepping down an icy step and slipped, the Snap was so gross and piercing my buddy puked right there and then! I broke it running in the winter once, when I stepped in a rut! Slipped out and snapped the ankle bone! I now do all my winter jogging indoors!
Torn Achilies at the muscle: When I was younger I was into gymnastics to help me with my Karate and Judo/Sambo. I was actually not bad, a bit clumsy but not that bad. I was doing the vault and as I hit the beat board to jump my Calf snapped and I ended up rolling onto the gym floor in pain...the pain almost made me pass out, I went in and they had to suture the muscle to the tendon with 88 small sutures. My left leg has never been the same.
Broken shin bone: I once ventured into full contact Karate....back in the day when that was cool! At one point I ended up sparring with a guy about 60 pounds heavy than me and we hit shin to shin and my Fib snapped like a tooth pick, he was just a bit taller and caught my leg funny. It did not stop me from walking or sparring, but the next day I got an x-ray and they showed me the break, it was not that bad, but I was side lined for a month!
Strained knee: I was throwing a guy in Judo and the clutz dropped onto my outstretched leg! Strained the MCL and hurt like a bugger for about four weeks.
Torn Hamstring: I was kicking in class one night and did not warm up, I went for a high front snap kick and the class got to hear a mini shotgun blast as my hamstring tore in the middle and made the most god awful clapping noise. The lucky thing for me was it was not complete and while I have a crap load of scar tissue the Hammy did not need to go under the knife. I still have a hard time with my right leg and warming up.
Brused hip bone...Twice: the first time was in Judo, I was playing Uke and was getting tossed about, which can be fun if not hard on the body...the guy I was working with was a rather energetic black belt and I was getting ready to test for that level, when he threw me off the shoulder and I landed just off the mat! My hip drove into the way to thin mat that covered the hard wood and I got a hip bruise that hurt like hell. The second time, my Karate instructor told me to go to the chiropractor.....NEVER AGAIN! He twisted my hip a bit then drove it into the table, the hip popped in and out and hurt like HELL! I could not walk right for a week and missed a tournament because of it...bastard!
Tone groin muscle: With all the fighting I had done you would think that I hurt my Abductors doing some fancy kick or some hard throw or something, Nope! I was ice skating with a girl friend of mine and one leg went west and the other east! Not much fun! I also broke my nose that day on the ice.....all of this would sound better if I did this in a Hockey game or speed skating, but I was on a pond trying to learn how to skate. 18 years old at the time and Canadian....could not skate...I almost had to move! But the government actually did not find out!
Strained lower back: During all the fighting I used to do, in and out of the tournaments, I used to do a lot of conditioning as well. One day I was lifting weights, I used to do a lot of power lifting to get ready for judo. I did exactly what Bruce Lee did, I was doing "good mornings" and went to lift the bar up in a dead lift fashion and the pain in my back hit me right away, I dropped the bar and crumpled to the floor. Thank God it was not a disk but a strain. I can tell you that it hurt like hell and I was young enough to not know what the hell hit me!
Tone Abdominal muscle: I went into a judo tournament one time and ended up in a heavier weight catagory than I was used to...they merged three groups together because they did not have enough people. I went to do a hip throw and as I grabbed the guy and pulled I felt a burning in my gut and then a horrible pain. It hurt to breath, it hurt not to breath, I puked and it just about killed me!
broken rib(s): I have broken ribs sparring and catching a kick, I have broke a few in a car accident, I even broke a few in a bar fight when I was trying to break up a brawl. The broken ribs are as bad as you are told by others. It hurts to do anything. Don’t even get me going on bowel movements with broken ribs…there is a “its crappy joke” if I ever seen one!
Torn Pec: Two words...Pec Dec! I went to a gym with a buddy and was working on the pec dec and he added weight to the pec dec till it was hard to move it, then as I was straining he dropped a few plates on it that you can add on without pulling in a pin or anything, It hurt like a heart attack, not good for a 26 year old guy to have a heart attack, so I thought it was the muscle. I was so upset that I threw a fit and almost kicked his butt.....He thought he was helping me get ready for a tournament or something and he buggered me up in the end
Dislocated shoulder(s): First time was with my brother when I was four. he was playing air plane with me, him on his back with his legs up and me on his legs, he pulled my arms and kind of flipped me accidentally, the twist and pull motion popped it out. Then a bunch of times in Gymnastics and Judo. It never felt bad till they put it back in, it was kind of achy but the real pain is when it pops back in. I guess when you don’t see it coming, its not as bad…when you know its coming…well your colon puckers!
Broken clavicle: I landed on my arm funny during some fooling around with some students. we were practicing take downs and I reached out instinctively and SNAP, it broke in the middle...Now that hurt, thankfully it did not cut through the skin and they just reduced the facture and I had to wear a special brace for two months.
Pulled biceps; I was doing the rings in gymnastics and on a dislocate I did not have my control during the swing and let one arm relax and it pulled the biceps muscle. Hurt like a Charlie horse for a month.
Dislocated elbow: Back when Emma was a baby I often would go to sleep in the basement before work….keeping in mind I average 4 to 5 hours a night now, but for her first four years I would get around 2-3 hours at most. Well, one week end my wife told me to go get some rest in the basement, I did…fell asleep on the sofa. I woke up and got off the sofa way to fast, the balance was not their yet and I kind of fell….My arm and leg had gone to sleep on me so the fall was part balance, part numb leg! I fell with my arm straight out to catch myself…the one that was numb as well! The resulting injury was caused when the arm landed funny palm on mat and I hyper extended my elbow about 2-3 inches the wrong way! The pain was so bad I wished I had broken it. It took about a month to heal up what ever it was that I had just done to that poor right arm of mine.
Broken forearm: I was sparring with a friend in Karate and blocked a front kick a bit to flat and broke my own forearm. It was a "minor" fracture...but damn can those swell up! Hurt like a bugger. The hospital did not cast me they gave me a tenser and sling?? Anyways, I was back training the next night...Against MD's orders.
Broken fingers: If you block a kick or punch, select an open hand or a closed hand....not a relaxed hand. I broke my fingers trying to block a kick and was relaxed. I was sparring with a junior and did not see them as a threat. I blocked, or smacked at the kick and I broke my little finger. That hurts like hell! I broke my pinky finger on my right hand catching a fast ball I had just pitched…well I kind of caught it! And I have also twisted my fingers up in Judo uniforms to get ready for a throw and broken a digit or two…ever wonder why judo guys tape their fingers….
Brused knuckles: We use a device called a Makiwara. For those of you not in the know about Japanese Karate, it is basically a post that is anchored to the floor and then a straw pad or rubber pad is put over the striking surface. It is not very soft! The straw is the worst. We had a Makiwara at the main club I trained at that had old rope cord wrapped around the post, it was the kind that you use on a farm or at home, not soft and rather rough on the hands. You line up and reverse punch this post as many times as you can, as hard as you can. It is supposed to condition the knuckles. One night my instructor got a old straw pad for the post and we tried to see who could break this bad in. I did close to 1000 punches on both hands at full force that night. my knuckles lost the skin and they were bruised up bad. I was also picking straw out of them in the change room. They were okay that night, but as the next day set in they stiffened up and the knuckles swole up. I had bright purple bruises under the scabs and they hurt like hell for four days. I put ICE on them at home, but it did not help. After a few days of sitting around I also noticed they felt like they had elastics in them. Moving them had this creepy rubbery or springy feel to them. I ended up at the walk in clinic, trying to explain what I had done to the doctor. I guess it still sounds rather dumb! Anyways, I had bruised the knuckles so bad that the blood had seeped into the joint, having broken down the joint capsule. The doctor said rest them and no more makiwara! I did exactly what he told me to....for a month, then sensei got another straw pad.............
Broken Jaw: I have broken my jaw twice. The first time I was sparring in Karate, we didn’t use gloves or any safety equipment. I was distracted when a instructor called us to line up and the guy I was training with clocked me with a round house kick to the chin, Shin to Chin!...Chin lost. The pain was something else. my teeth clacked together and I did not know what hurt more. Your muscles in your face Clap shut into a cramp that is hard to describe. The second time was at a bar. I was working the back bar as security when I was called to the parking lot to help with a fight. Three bouncers were already there. I ran out a side door and one of the "kids" that was fighting the bouncers had a bat. I did not even see it coming. He blasted me right in the chin with the bat. I was lucky that I had my chin to chest at the time or the bat would have rolled off into my neck, it bounced off my chest however. I know it does not sound like it but I was really lucky it did not land flush or my teeth and my jaw would have been broken. The second one also lead to me getting my wisdom teeth pulled and they found a tumor in my jaw that I had not known about….so Yah, broken jaw lead to lucky turn of events!
Broken cheak bone And eye popped out of head!: I was at a tournament in a small Manitoba town one year and was competing in the finals. The guy I was facing was good, but he never kicked higher than your waist. He was a great puncher and I had worked out in my head how to keep him away with kicks and win the match on points from a good distance. Back then even point matches were "semi-contact" with lots of injuries and a tone of KO's. I had the guy 1/2 point behind and I was on my way to winning. The contest is basically two points, but they score each point as a half point, unless it is such a good point that they call it a full point (two points). So, we were started and I backed him up with a front kick and a spinning back kick right off the hop. I won’t ever forget this.... I thought I had gotten a point with the back kick as it had connected, the judge seated facing me called it, the judge that I could see to my left saw it and called it, but the ring ref was behind me and he waived it off. The guy I was fighting saw the waive off and I did not. I spun to go back to the starting position and the other guy caught me with a beautiful round house kick to the face. I was half facing back with my back to him on an angle. I did not see the kick...except in the video after. Right away, I felt a bone chilling pain in my neck and my face felt like I had been hit with a brick. My eyesight on my left side went black and I ended up totally out of it on my feet. I could see in the video that I was out but staggering around and you could see me from behind. The judge sat me on the floor and called for a medic right away, the whole time I had my back to the camera. They called an ambulance and as I was laid down on the floor, you could see something was wrong with my face. My cheek bone was broken and my eye was kind of dangling from the eye socket (use your imagination, but it was not that gross, it kind of looked like it was bulging…but its much more fun to think of it like a foot out of my eye socket or something…go for it). I was so out of it, and I was lucky. it hurt like hell. At the hospital I came to the next morning, the memory of what had happened was kind of fuzzy, but my face still hurt like hell and i had a bandage wrapped around me like a turban and it came over the left side of my face. I had to go into surgery that day and get the cheek bone put back in place and a hard plastic disky thing was put into to strengthen the bone. My eye was fine, but I have a crush injury of the lens that makes me have to wear glasses to correct the vision issue when I read…oh, and I am night blind now thanks to that….my wife hates it when I drive at night with out my glasses on….but those really bright things…those are car head lights…don’t aim at them…see everything is fine.
Cracked skull: When I was in Grade school I was the smallest kid, Hell I am still a smaller guy in stature. As a short kid, I was picked on and it did two things to me, I got mean an I got stupid...er brave. If you challenged me to do something stupid..er, scary, I was all over it. One of my buddies asked me to go down the local garbage hill on my bike. In Winnipeg in the old days they would pile garbage up high then put dirt over it and make a hill out of the local garbage dump and then put a park around it...You will notice they don’t do that anymore. So, I was dared to go up the hill and down it on my bike....an old banana seat bike. I was fine for the first ten seconds or so, and then I hit a huge rock as my speed got up and popped up in the air, over the handle bars and landed head first on the rock, I was KO'd right away! Out for ten minutes and the horror that was my face did not come to me until I had been up for about ten minutes. I had a huge goose egg on my head, my nose was broken....which I will get to later and my face was all scratched up. A x-ray of my skull showed a small crack, an MRI showed that while many would think I did not have a brain, I did...and it was fine. I had a minor concussion...again get to it later...and a hell of a head ache!
Stabbed three times: I was stabbed twice while working at a school and once walking home from Karate, all three times were not in areas I would call life threatening, but they still hurt!
Lit on fire!: I have told you all about my experiment with breaking boards while lighting them on fire....not good. On another occasion I was helping a buddy at his cabin get rid of a dead tree in the middle of a heat wave. We had not seen any rain a few weeks and this tree had dried out. I was in the cabin while he cut the tree up with a chain saw. I came out to see a six foot high pile of cut up tree that was about four or five feet wide and seven feet long, not a great circle maker I guess. He had a stick with an old sock on it that he was lighting on fire to make a big ass bon fire! I said, "no, let me" and I grabbed the stick from him. Now Keep in mind I was wearing a track suit and baseball cap. It was one of the rare times I was actually wearing my glasses as well. He tried to warn me but all I could hear was "No....." and the bon fire in front of me was suddenly all around me, the pressure was great and the flames sucked the oxygen out of my lungs. I started running backwards as fast as I could and did not stop till the cool air hit me and I ran over my buddy! He had dumped about four gallons of gas on the fire and a bunch of it had been on the grass behind me. He had been thinking he would toss the stick into the fire from afar, When I stupidly grabbed it and walked into a fire bomb. the injures I got from this were burns on my hands and I lost parts of my goatee for a while. But the Hat saved my hair, the track suit luckily did not go up and the rest of me was covered. My buddy said for a second he could not see me at all...then he saw me running backwards full tilt! We both remember the sound of the fire going up, it was horrible. Like a whoosh with a growl added in! trust me...this was not as much fun as it sounds.
14 broken noses: Your read that right...14 and two surgeries to boot. Not much fun. I can tell you how I got them...but I think it is just more fun to imagine!
Four Concussions and 2 minor concussions: one going down a hill, one in a car wreck for the minor ones. The four concussions came in training, a gymnastics tournament, eating a bat in a bar fight and the last one was when a board slid off the house we built out of town and nailed me in the hard hat! Be wary of falling timber!
multiple deep bruises and tones of abrasions and lacerations. Not going into detail here, Let me just say that the worst one was when I put my face threw a wind shield in a car accident!
Now the only thing Jackie has on me is that he is a movie star! Oh, and the fools still sell me life and health insurance and he can’t get any!!
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