At one stage or another whether it be as an athlete or as a fitness enhuasiast we’ve all been injured. Sometimes it might only be a little niggle or strain, other times it may be more serious like breaks and tears. They happen.
This post isn’t about have to prevent injuries (but if your interested click here for a blog on reducing injury risk), or even how to treat certain injuries (we’ll cover that in future). Rather this is a guide on how to deal with being injured, physically and psychologically, mainly based off of my experience as an athlete and as a coach, with a little bit of sports science sprinkled in here and there.
Like most people, I am not an indestructable athlete and have had my fair share of strains and sprains. Over two years ago now I was heavily set back back by patellar tendinopathy (read about my initial rehab here). That (touch wood) has been my only serious injury. Yes I’ve had a couple of rough ankle sprains over the years but patellar tendinopathy really took a lot out of me mentally and physically and low-key took me until this year to get back to where I was and beyond it.
Theres no real science behind anything in the post. Its all from my experiences from having to deal with injuries as an athlete, a coach and above all a human being.
So, lets get into it!
1. Find and Use a Good Physiotherapist ASAP:
As admirable and noble as it is to work or play through an injury, no one likes being in pain or having their movement capabilities impaired or impeded. It sucks being injured, but ignoring it won’t make it magically go away. Physiotherapists spend years learning about the body, studying injuries and how to restore full function after injuries or traumas. If anyone can help you get back to full strength and living your best life again it is them. Especially a really good one.
Short term it might make sense in your head to just soldier on, but in reality it will catch up with you eventually and the problem will be amplified. The fear of being told by a physio to cease and dissist all activity is a real fear for most athletes and people, but believe it or not a lot of physiotherapists are or have been athletes, and people who want to enjoy life, in their lifetime. They understand the necessity or lining out for championship on Sunday, and with clear communication would love to help you line out while minising any further damage to yourself, while setting you on the road to recovery. But, you’ll only know if you make an appointment.
2. Find Other Ways To Stay Active:
Arguably the hardest part of any injury is how it impedes on your lifestyle, mobility and day to day activity. Going from having the freedom to do whatever you want to being confined to long periods of rest or involuntary inactivity is tough psychologically. The mental boredom and time left to yourself to think about all your lifes problems is a real danger to oneself. This is why its important to find other ways to stay active.
Staying ‘active’ can be taken many different ways. It could be arranging to meet friends or having them call around if your aren’t mobile enough to see them. Maybe it means going to training and matches and helping out coaching wise. Or maybe it means just altering how you do what you already do. For example just doing upper body gym sessions to allow a leg injury heal, or changing exercises to avoid an injured area. The main thing is to find ways to exercise to maintain what you have worked so hard to build already, or even improve some areas that little bit more if you can without doing any damage to the injured area. Get creative here, theres always something you can do and improve.
One thing that helps me when I’m injured is making my rehab sessions a daily priority. By placing an emphasis on them it mentally slows me down to focus on what I need to do right now to get better, not what I’m missing out on or should be doing if I was healthy. This leads onto my third point, accepting where you are and focusing on the now.
3. Focus On The Now:
When injured, it is easy get wrapped up in the shoulda coulda woulda’s. I should’ve done this to prevent injury, I could’ve gone to this event if I was healthy, I would’ve had a great game if I had played today. But you couldn’t do any of those things, so why worry about them?
On a more philosophical note, life gets a lot easier when you live in the here and now. Accepting where your at right now in life can be hard, particularly when you’ve suffered what feels like a setback. But taking that moment, or moments to appreciate where you are at right now, without casting judgement on yourself or attaching emotion to your thoughts can open your eyes to where your at right now, and what needs to be done right now to get you to where you want to be.
The past is gone and the future isn’t here yet, so make the most of what you can do in this very moment. You got injured in the past and you can’t play until the future, so making your rehabilitation and all the other things you can do to better yourself as an athlete or person can make life a little easier to deal with in the present.
4. Study Film:
Then activity levels decrease, screen time increases. Fact.
Why not make use of the extra screen time?
As an athlete studying your sport is invaluable. I love the phrase ‘become a Phd. in your sport’, because its true. The greatest sports people not only may be physically gifted, but they understand their sport at a really high level. The only way to do this is to watch a lot of it, break it down play-by-play, ask coaches and players smarter or better than you questions about what they see and how they do this or that and come back smarter than when you left injured.
If your lucky enough to have your own games recorded, spend the extra time really watching them in detail and identify your strengths and how to amplify them, and your weakness you need to work on. The extra down time is a great time to also plan how you will become better and what your good at and how you will get better at your weaknesses. Even more importantly, having your own games recorded also means you have your opposition recorded. Study them, their plays and their players tendancies and when you come back you’ll be more than ready to pick them apart.
5. Go Anyway:
Personally, the hardest part of any injury for me is the social isolation that can be entailed with it. Being stuck in the house all day by yourself, not being able to work or parttake in training, not being able to go do fun stuff with your friends, it takes its toll on you mentally. We don’t realise how much we actually need people and social interaction until we have none.
So, thats why I say go anyway. Go down to training and see your friends before training, pick up cones or help out in a few drills if you can. Go do things with your friends that you can do or have them ring or call round. Seeing a few faces and hearing a voice can make a big difference instead of just answering texts all day and talking to the dog.
We all need people. An injury is as taxing mentally as it is physically. Sometimes just complaining to a friend about how much pain your in can make the pain a little more bearable. Big or small, theres no need to face the world on your own. It takes great strength to say I need help, whether that be to pick up your schoo bag when you can’t because of a sprained wrist or when you can’t get off the couch because you don’t want to have to deal with being injured today. We all have them days, and any good friend would prefer you told them rather than you didn’t. So, do.
6. Bonus: Take The Guess Work Out:
Much like how a good physio can take the guess work out of your rehabilitation, a good coach or trainer can help get you back to full health and fitness and even make you more robust and healthy. Returning to sport after a long or traumatic injury can be scary, and thats where the guidance of a coach or personal trainer can be invaluable. Too many athletes and individuals are left to bridge the gap between ending rehab and returning to sport or everyday life by themselves, and it is in this gap where we are most vulnerable to reinjury. So why take the risk?
If you are looking to return to sport after injury and haven’t a clue what to do or where to start, or maybe you’ve been gearing up to return but want to make sure your coming back healthier and performing better than before. Or maybe your sick of gripes and pains in your day to day life and just want to feel good again. Reach out to me, we can get you back to your best together.
Until next time, take care of yourself.
Aaron.
Silent Grind Performance 
Leave a comment