Sometimes, obstacles will jump out of nowhere – and you’ll be temporarily stopped on your BJJ journey. There’s no going around it; it happens to everyone, professional athletes included.
Such a thing recently happened to Romulo Barral. He was in Spain, as a part of his Europe seminar tour, when he woke up with lumbar pain:
I thought it was something due to training. I took some medicine and went to my next seminar with a lot of pain.
There were hours and hours of pain, [but] I managed to minister the seminar sitting on the tatame with my brother Bitim showing the positions.We finished the seminar and I took another medicine that softened the pain for a while. We travelled to the last seminar, and the pain began to increase.
The night before the seminar I had many shivers and pain, [but] still I woke up and committed to it.
However, things turned worse for Barral after the seminar ended:
I was already having a high fever. That’s when my doctor sent me to the hospital because he suspected it was some infection. And he wasn’t wrong, I had a blood infection (Spondilodiscitis) and then I went to Ernado [hospital].
After many tests, they found an infection in my lower back; between L4 and L5. It was 16 days of IV antibiotics, 16 hard days in hospital.
Thankfully, it all ended well:
And God has delivered me; the results of my last blood test were all negative. Now I can go home and continue oral treatment.
These were very hard days I went through. I’ve been weak several times but I always came back stronger.
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