INTERVIEW

Abe: Judo isn’t something you can do alone. It’s a sport that requires an opponent. That’s why, even before getting stronger, you can learn proper courtesy and cultivate gratitude and respect toward your opponent. Of course, the sense of achievement you feel when you throw your opponent in a match is great. It’s a moment when you feel all the hard practice you did up to that point paid off.

Abe: When I don’t have a competition coming up, I practice six days a week. I do training for a little under two hours and practice for two to two and a half hours, with rest periods for sleep and things like that in between. I also run sometimes for mental toughness. When practice ends, I attend to my body, have dinner, and then go to bed. I repeat that routine day in and day out.

Abe: In freshman year of high school, a senior lent me a treatment device. That’s when I learned about such devices. It was a microcurrent device, but because the current was so subtle, I could barely feel anything, and I wasn’t even sure what it was supposed to help with as I used it.

But I realized the pain would lessen when I used the device, so I thought, “Wow, this is amazing.” After entering university, I started using one at home as well, and now it’s become something I can’t do without. At training camp in my senior year, I used ultrasound and 3D interferential current. I started using these devices almost every day in the lead-up to the 2021 international competition, which I mentioned earlier. Treatment devices are also available in the PARK24 dormitory.

Abe: In terms of injury risk, it’s the whole body. But if I had to mention specific parts, it would be the shoulders, elbows, lower back, neck, and ankles. I’ve also injured my wrist. Since it’s a contact sport, these sorts of injuries aren’t something you can avoid simply through practice. No one knows when and how they’ll happen. That’s precisely why daily care is essential to prevent injuries, and why I need to stay in top condition at all times for practice and competition. That’s one of the challenging aspects of pursuing a career in judo.

Abe: I use a treatment device about three times a day. When I’m not injured, I sometimes cut back to twice a day, once during the day and once at night, but I always use it before bed. And I might wear a small microcurrent device during the day and sometimes I’ll leave it on while I sleep.

Besides self-care, I have specific people I go to for treatment, and I choose whom to go to depending on the type of care I need. For example, I ask a certain person for massages. When I had back pain that wouldn’t go away, I got a gymnastics trainer to examine me. Whatever my condition is at the time, I have people I can rely on, which is reassuring.

Abe: As was the case with me, a lot of people probably begin using treatment devices after they start feeling pain. But I recommend using them daily before pain appears, when fatigue has accumulated, or even before it accumulates. That’s because they’re effective not just for treating pain and injury, but also as support for maintaining a body that doesn’t get into such states in the first place.

For example, with junior and senior high school students, the teacher supervising them might not have much knowledge or understand the importance of care. Even if the students are feeling a bit fatigued, they might shrug it off because they’re full of energy. When you’re young, you can overdo things to a certain extent, but it’s important to get into the habit of using the devices even from those early years. Fatigue can accumulate in ways you don’t notice, which puts you at greater risk of injury.

That said, until you become aware of the importance of treatment devices, you won’t understand that you need them. That’s why it’s important to create opportunities for people to use them regularly, so that they can experience pain subsiding or fatigue lessening. For example, it might be good to create an incentive to use them, like giving people a reward for using a treatment device once. [laughs]

I myself didn’t use them every day until I suffered a major injury. But it’s too late once you get injured. This is what I want people to become aware of at an early stage.