KARATE AND PHYSIO

As previously mentioned, I was born in 1994 in Hull, in the UK, and I was diagnosed at 3 days old. So, physio has always been a big part of my life. Back then (making me sound so old already) my parents were trained in all sorts of treatments and chest clearance methods. The main one being for infants was chest Percussions. This involved taking a cupped hand and rhythmically patting the patient’s chest and back. This technique helps loosen the mucus that builds in the lungs. It’s still used today as its very effective in most cases.

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(Just a side note here in recent years my online CF community has grown and I love seeing that this method is still used today. However, not everyone is aware of CF or this practice in general so its saddening to see many parents and carers for people with CF getting online grief for them “Beating their Children!” Now I understand their concern but in 99% of the cases they are concerned about the hardness of the pats. Again, I get it but what they fail to understand is the thud they hear from the pats is not caused by a hard hit but from the cupping of the hand designed specifically for the opposite purpose. We cup the hand to make a small barrier of air between the body and the hand. This makes a loud thud. Take clapping and slapping your hands together. But it’s that very cushion that prevents much impact on the surface but also effectively channels the impact deeper into the chest to loosen the mucus. So yes, it sounds hard but believe me I’d be more concerned seeing that impact with a flat or balled- up hand. So, if you’re just a curios parent come here from tiktok, I personally want to thank you for taking the time out to do your research and not misguidedly start criticising parents giving their children or babies life excessing treatment.)

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When I was old enough to be more mobile, I was taught so methods I could do myself. Firstly, autogenic drainage. This is a breathing method that helps loosen the mucus though forced breaths ranging in intensity. The technique I was taught was to do three sets of each exercise. The earliest I can remember was 1 set was 10 and then increased to 15. This may have been less as an infant so feel free to search online or consult a physiotherapist on what works for you. The first set of ten consists of inhaling through the nose for 3 seconds holding for 5 then slowly and calmly exhaling through the mouth until the lungs are empty. Be sure to breathe into the stomach, on the inhales the belly should rise with the breath. Some people do this naturally, but the majority of people don’t. Repeat until the set is complete. The second set is slightly more intense. Breathe into the stomach for 5 seconds this time, hold for 5 then exhale slightly stronger until the lungs are clear. Again, repeat until you’ve done a full set. Finally, slowly breathe in slowly for 10 seconds, hold for 5 and then exhale for as long and as hard as you can. Much like a lung function test. Even today I still here my old physio shouting encouragements and getting me to imaging blowing a house down in the distance.

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More entertaining methods when I was younger was using the flutter after My Autogenic drainage, The best way to describe it is like a toy I had as a child. It was shaped like a smoking pipe, and it had a ball in the end. The aim was to blow the ball and hold it in the air for as long as you could. This is great in itself, but the Flutter took it one step further. The call was solid and metal and instead of holding it in the air, it was sealed in a inch or so, so the ball would hit the top and bounce back. Blocking the hole, to be blown back up over and over. The quick and repetitive resistance would literally rattle both the ball and your lungs. Shifting the mucus as it went. My favourite however was trampolining. The bouncing is actually a great mucus shifter as it turns out.

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I just want to talk briefly about Chris my paediatric CF physio who would both push me to my limits and care for me like her own son when attending my clinic appointments. My Cf team, Julie Mould (my head nurse who taught me so much about not just how to do 90% treatments that even some nurses aren’t trained in but how to stand up for myself) Anne Bentley (my nutritionist who would encourage my weight gain and played a key part in being happy about progress rather than just my end results). Dr Beddis and “Mis. B” my head doctor and surgeon that saved my life on multiple occasions, listened to me and my parents and ensured others treated us with the same treatment and respect).

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Now they’re just the Methods I used on the ward. In general, any exercise will massively benefit someone with CF. So, I have taken part in so many over the years.

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Along with Disney’s Hercules, Space jam was a favourite of mine growing up and my dad would frequently take me to a basketball court inside Princess quay (the towns shopping centre) I have some of my earliest memories there and clearly the playing and messing around with my dad paid off as I was able to shoot a full-size basket at the age of 5. By 7 I got onto Hulls under 16s team, Hull lasers it was called briefly. That ended at 9 but I still loved to play sports. On a side note, at 15 I got onto Hulls under 16’s baseball team for a season but I decided to quit to do more martial arts.

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Around the time I was playing basketball I was meant to attend a youth club, which turned out to be a dance class. Not really caring me and my brother Alex went for a while until my dad took us out to do martial arts and football. I never saw my dad as homophobic, but Alex was attending a gymnastics class as was getting pretty good until he got taken out too (FYI he would love us should we be in the LGBTQ+ community but I don’t think he wanted to encourage activities he thought was too feminine). I wasn’t a big fan of football or rugby, but I was good at the martial arts class I took, and Alex got pretty into football.

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We moved across hull when I was around 10 so I had a short break from extracurricular activities and having my portacath placed a year or so prior my arm still wasn’t at full strength for basketball and there was some concern about knocking my port. I also had a huge knock to my confidence. Moving school in year 5 then to move up to secondary/ high school a year after. I went from an outgoing talk to everyone kinda kid to a shy and reserved kid. I would rather just keep my head down. I have to say that’s never really changed but the years to come would give me plenty of tips and experience at masking that side of me.

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By chance when I was 14 we had someone knock at the door getting members for a local karate class. We considered it only because my dad knew the couple that knocked. We would usually call BS on anyone selling stuff door to door. We gave it a shot and loved it. My sensei and his wife Sandy were awesome and became family friends after a while. As I was due to turn 16 Sandie approached me and said She would be taking the class some weeks and would need a senpi (teaching assistant by this definition) and asked if I would like to take the role.

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After passing an initial assessment I was accepted onto the course and started attending the instructor class with the senior instructor Sensei James. It was very intense. I will not mention the organisation we was under because at the time our region did thing slightly differently to the rest, that had got itself a reputation of becoming a McDojo (a martial arts class more like a pyramid scheme rather than a class that taught anything with substance) I can assure you it wasn’t the case here we had a senior class filled with people that loved martial arts; they would train other styles, which we wasn’t allowed to do, we focused more on the meaning behind kata, called bunkai, we focused more of self defence and if you was comfortable we would go full contact with each other. May as well as the hall we used as our Dojo was opposite Hull royal. We had a inside joke that a rule is “If you break someone, you have to be the one to walk/ drive them across to A&E. Don’t panic it we was all fine as side the usual sparing injuries).

I must say while I was doing all this training while I at school I rarely took part in P.E. It was all Rugby or football so I would often take advantage of my teachers lack of CF knowledge and if I had forgotten my kit or just didn’t want to do football outside I would simply say “my CF is playing up today” which was never questioned. I got away with that for two years. Then when leaving school I had to think about what I wanted to do in college. I really wanted to be a film actor but not only was there not many opportunities in hull at the time, but I couldn’t stand doing theatre acting. So begrudgingly took advice from my dad and went to do sport… for the next 5 years. I started doing a sporting and Excellence BETC. It was a one-off course that focused on coaching at an elite and professional level. Basically, with a couple more coaching certificates we would have the skills and knowhow to coach professional athletes and Olympians. So, a bit more difficult than the usual sports BETC that anyone could get distinctions in for showing up and doing laps round a track.

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Once that course had finished, I got a fitness instructing job with the NHS cracking down on teen obesity. The group was called Alive N Kicking and had secondary group called Fit Fans aimed at dads that attended football and rugby that would be considered obese. At one point I had the terrifying job of marketing that group on match days handing out flyers and chatting to… erm… the heaver set fans outside the stadium. As the tiny and shy guy, I am this seemed nerve racking and I got a lot of “oy you calling me fat?!”. Thankfully despite the fact everyone in hull looks rough as hell or they might rob your house if they had the chance I can confidently say looks are deceiving and after asking me the question with a stern face, they would wait for my excuse of why I was giving them the leaflet, smile and pat me on the back and we would laugh and chat about the game and the fitness course. That’s the thing with hull we look dodgy but were actually pretty nice people on the most part. Even if were the second least educated city in the UK.

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During this time I was also 19 and just been given my first Karate class to be in charge of. I took over from my youngest brothers’ instructors. I had also started a new course in sport, getting started with some of the certificates I mentioned earlier. I was now training 9 times a week. Monday off, Tuesday boxing, Wednesday Boxing and college, Thursday senior Karate class and boxing, Friday college, Saturday fitness instructing, and  Sunday 2 karate classes.  Safe to say I was fit as a fiddle and still my weight remained at its highest 56kg, and my lung function was around 30-40%. On a Sunday the second class was a 2 hour long fitness session for over 13’s because we didn’t feel it ethical to make small children gruelling circuit training and copious amounts of push ups etc. However, I didn’t have time to drop my sister who was 5 at the time home between classes so I would often show off doing the circuit and sprits carrying my sister on my back. It must have paid off because at the time I could max out the back machine and the leg press machine at the gym. I can still do the back machine, but I tried to max out the leg press when I started cycling for charity and  felt like almost popped a hernia haha. I tried doing 1 push up with her only back when she turned 13 and I almost broke my face haha.

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My boxing was part of the course we trained at St. Pauls boxing academy known for coaching Luck Campbell, Olympic gold medallist. Coincidently he too was 56k.5g when he won his medal. The academy actually forgot they had was working with my college, so we mostly got 1 and 1 training and mostly got to train with local professionals. I had a lot of promise to become carded (a registered amateur fighter) mostly because we had literally nobody over 18 locally in my weight division aside from Luke. Unfortunately, my button being placed put an end to that.

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My next plan was to compete the PT course it would only cost a couple grand for the more intensive qualifications and guaranteed a placement at the end in DW gym. I noticed while they would give you a placement it would be up to you to find clients. Being built like a match stick man I felt like it would be difficult to convince people I could help them bulk up when most of the gym rats could bench me for reps. So, I decided to do business and ended up leaving sports altogether when my health started declining after a severer infection that nearly killed me off in my early 20’s. I still achieved all my qualifications and had got my first blackbelt. So while I was working on my health I decided to do a 2 year business course and prepare for opening my own gym. In a random turn of events using my confidence skills from karate and my business qualifications I started working in housing for 5 years and have made a great work portfolio.

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I used this new platform to start a national poster campaign. Do you think I’m fit. Working with Fixers ( a company that gives young adults access to professionals that collaborate with you to generate a piece of media, a short film or animation, a song, etc, or in my case a poster) It was meant to be published nationally but they didn’t find many gym chains to carry it. I managed to get it posted in a lot of local places including hospital wards, and a couple of gyms and I put it up at work for a laugh).

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I think the most recent training program I did aside my own fitness regiments for charity events, was when I singed up to do Ben Mudges fitness program. He had created a brilliant PT program with a app. He was able to give me feedback and advice over the in real time and could measure my progress when I recorded my training data. I highly recommend it.

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I was very fortunate in one way because while I admit I sucked at keeping on top of my treatment and was MRSA flare ups I had worked hard enough to have my lung function decline so slowly my oxygen levels have never been impacted significantly. Often in the 96-99% range. My doctor explained it as I was effectively doing altitude training, whereas instead of there being less oxygen in the atmosphere my lungs just wasn’t capable of holding much air in general. Getting my 2nd Dan with 18% lung function

Overall, for CF

 So that was my personal background. Id like to talk about Training in general. Training with CF is really important, but I get it’s not for everyone. I’m sure I don’t have to go into too much detail on the benefits because I see it as, its obviously good for everyone else but its even better for us. With tons of options out there I would recommend finding something you love doing. It’s like the saying find a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. I hated Biking in public but put me on an exercise bike for an hour in front of a tv with a good show or a book, it would be difficult getting me off it. Plus it makes me really hungry so it’s perfect for increasing my appetite that I will admit is non existent for long periods. I enjoy swimming and was surprised how quickly my strength improved. Recent research shows that having regular exercise and nebulised treatments can optimise Kaftrio too.

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We have some cool devices for us Cfers too. I’m yet to try these vibrating vests I see on my online community. I believe they’re more an American thing but they look like they’re pretty effective and I know if I get my hand on one I’d be easily entertained by it for a good few weeks.

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I got to assess a device from France that effectively hoovered out your lungs. On long slow exhales, the machine would start a gentle suction that like the flutter would pulsate on and off. It too had a option to increase its intensity so I would do three sets of increasing intensity like Autogenic drainage. I found this the most effective one I’ve ever used. After 3 days I had completely cleared my lungs and would only have to do it once or twice a week to maintain clearness. Regrettably it was just a trail for a few months, but I may invest in one for my personal use.