Gosh, this one has been a long time coming – the post I mean, not the physical shortcoming.

Indeed the physical shortcoming in question, the injury, let’s call it – I guess plural if we’re being particular – generally, are merely old shortcomings having not been allowed adequate time to repair thus never totally freeing me from their burdensome handicap…

Ordinarily it goes like this: I acquire an injury, I give it a few days – by which I mean I afford it awareness for at least two days – where I then resume normal function; it’s this impetuous desire for resumption of function that I believe to be the key issue.

…‘You need to rest the injured area’, are the words I would likely hear if I had the sense to visit a physiotherapist or, in fact with regard to this latest ‘shortcoming’, perhaps a chiropractor…

Where body parts manifesting shortcomings have in the past included, thus to some extent currently include, ribs, neck, groin, wrist, shoulders, elbows – and just like the rhyme – toes, the present (and never seen before) injury pertains to what I have expertly (self) diagnosed as, a pinched nerve of the lower back.

…I first experienced the discomfort sometime towards the end of the week-before-last but expected – as men tend to do – that given time the problem would rectify itself…

Which over that weekend and ensuing Monday it largely did: so there.

…Then come Tuesday night’s class, through sensible tactics (rather than throwing myself into the sport as if the very future of the planet depended on my sweating out tantamount to four litres of water on the way in, I managed to survive on just one bottle) I woke Wednesday morning feeling relatively spry.

Of course to any man worth any kind of anything to anyone, that level of progress is as good as full health; needless to say come Thursday night, having refilled my depleted bottle, all four were again required.

Friday morning, to my total surprise, I struggled to put on my socks.

So that’s the most recent complaint but taking into account the few days of rest I have already given it – push-ups, chin-ups, road-cycling, mountain-biking, hedge-pruning and lawn-mowing being the only strenuous activities in which I have partaken – then with the few more hours of downtime to come before the next onslaught of jiu-jitsu, that pinched nerve thing should soon become nothing more than just one of many niggling little recurring injuries.

That’s middle age for you.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Ria Kerr-Ring

Photography by Shaw Cummings