Finding a new style of grappling

I started the year on top of my game, ready to conquer the world. I set some pretty lofty goals for myself that included competing in Jiu-Jitsu tournaments, road races, and adventure races. I made it to two grappling tournaments and one adventure race before I nearly came to a complete stand still, having incurred several injuries along the way.

Now that I'm getting to end of my recovery, I've started to do some light grappling. I'm still a bit timid with my left knee where I strained the meniscus. As a result, I've had to learn a new way of grappling. It's sort of like having to reinvent your style. This isn't the first time I've had to do this. After surgery to repair a torn pectoral tendon, I found that I was favoring one side to avoid any possibility of re-injury.

My new style, it seems, is trying to almost totally avoid using my left leg. Of course, this doesn't work too well because there's a lot of movements I'm avoiding. It's not like it's just dead weight. I'm just not using it to bridge or butterfly hook or do anything that tweaks the knee of puts pressure on it. It's very interesting though, because I'm finding other ways to make the movements. This also means that I'm not using a lot of power. The finesse that's needed to effect the movements is incredible.

I have no doubt that in time I'll start feeling more comfortable with using the leg, but until then, I'm actually having a good time learning how to do things in a different way. I believe this will ultimately help me out when I'm completely healed. Had I not had the injury, I'm sure I wouldn't have even thought about learning how to grapple without using one of my legs.