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Welcome to ELEVATED Sport Injury. This is a place to learn tools to take your injury rehab to the next level. This is a place you can know that you are not alone. Everyone reading this is an injured athlete, knows an injured athlete, or is working to get an injured athlete back to playing.

So, we start by stating that INJURIES SUCK! They are miserable no matter if you miss 1 day, a week, a month, a season, or more. Sit on this for a moment. Recognize that this is a good thought to have right now.

Undoubtedly INJURIES SUCK!

Okay, now that we know that you can become an ELEVATED athlete. What this means is that even though you’re sidelined you still want to push yourself, you aren’t going to take rehab lightly, and you’re going to treat every rehab session like a practice session. Also, once you return to playing you want to be a better player than you were before the injury.

You essentially have 3 options moving forward with rehab:

1. Let the injury control you. Do the minimum. Put in what you need to get out of the rehab facility.
2. 50/50 split between you and the injury. Push yourself every day in rehab. Push the athletic trainer or physical therapist to give you challenging exercises. Do your exercises at home. Go slightly above expectations.
3. You control the injury and the outcome. Learn through your injury. You can take this time to learn Sport Psychology techniques (e.g. This blog). You can work on aspects of your game that may be limited. You can teach non-injured areas how to do things better and take control.

An important thing to remember (unless your injury is career-ending which is a whole other beast), as an injured athlete you will get back to playing your sport or a sport. Everything that you do from this moment on will impact how well you return to playing your sport.

Take Control

One of the first things that you have to recognize is that there are going to be things out of your control. Take a second, find a piece of paper, and write down 5 things that you believe are out of your control.

So, What did your list consist of? Were there physical or emotional things? Were there other people? Did you include your healing time? Also, did you think about the past, present, and future? Generally, like you cannot control every aspect of your sport you cannot control every aspect of your injury, no matter how much you may try to control it all.

What can’t you control?

A general list of things that are out of your control:

• When your injury happened.
• How your injury happened.
• The severity of your injury.
• What do your teammates and coaches say/think?
• If you need surgery or not.
• If you need crutches or a sling.
• When surgery is.
• How quickly your body heals?
• If your body has a setback.
• If your doctor, PT, or athletic trainer has not cleared you.
• When there is pain.
• When you finally get cleared to play.

These things out of your control cannot be your focus. They will show up, they will try to tear you down, and they will hold you back if you let them. DO NOT LET THEM! Instead, focus on the things that you can have an impact over.

What can you control?

Take another 30 seconds on another piece of paper and write down 5 things that you can have an impact on. You should notice that these things all come from your brain. You cannot control things that are outside of your mental approach even if they may be an injury within your body.

A general list of things that you can impact the most:

• Your thoughts
• Your feelings
• Your Attitude
• Your Intensity
• Your determination
• Your effort
• Your desires

An injured athlete cannot control how fast their body heals but you can Impact the environment to heal quickly.

You cannot control when there is pain but you can Impact its limitations.

You cannot control what other people say or think about your injury but you can impact their effectiveness.

An injured athlete cannot control the past, present, or future but you can Impact how the future turns out.

Continue to make, change, update, and improve your lists. Things are going to change throughout the injury-healing process. 

To have the most impact on your injury and minimize the effect of the things you cannot control there are 4 broad sport psychology techniques I believe you need to start to learn. Those 4 skills are Goal-setting, imagery, relaxation, and confidence-building. These all give you purpose, provide a good healing environment for the body, and move you from thinking about the injury to thinking about your return. In future posts will dive into the in-depth but for now, I want to give a brief introduction to each of these topics.

Goal-Setting

I am assuming that as an athlete and as a part of different teams you have made goals. Season goals and personal goals for each player on the team. Why do you make those goals? You make them so you have something to look forward to, something to achieve. Much like those goals injured athletes should have goals for the recovery process.

You should have different kinds of goals, ones that will help you daily and ones that will help you down the road, and for sure ones that will help you get back to playing. Below are 4 types of goals that I like my athletes to set when they get hurt.

Daily goals: Present-focused. Achievable every day. Creates daily successes. Short-term goals: Near-focused. Leads to long-term goals. Quick hitting.

Long-term goals: Future-focused. Provides direction. Desired results. Exercise goals: How athletes perform specific exercises. Controlling the details of physical therapy sessions.

Rehab goals: Determines what success looks like at the end of every physical therapy session. How the athlete reaches their highest standard.Return to play goals: The desired result of physical therapy. What athletes need to have the highest confidence for returning to sport.

DAILY GOALS:

If I do __________________ today, I know I will achieve __________________.

If I do __________________ today, I know I will achieve __________________.

Setting daily goals is an easy way to start setting goals if you are not in the habit of doing so already.

Imagery

Using imagery can be a helpful way to show your body how to heal. Imagining the results that you want to have helps the brain realize what it has to do to get that done. Imagery is much like practice. You walk through your plays or through motions of the sport to get muscle memories so that you don’t have to think about the motions when in the middle of a game.

As an injured athlete, you can imagine things such as your muscles/bones healing, and as you get more practice you can work on imagining your return to sport so that your body/brain is not surprised when you are pushing your limits.

It’s important to realize that imagery is difficult and it takes a lot of practice. So, this is a very simple example that I like athletes to start with and work on for only a couple of minutes a day.

Imagine shapes. Stick with each shape for 5-10 seconds:

1. Circle
2. Square
3. Triangle
4. Rectangle

Imagine colors. Stick with each color for 5-10 seconds:

1. Blue
2. Red
3. Yellow
4. Green

Relaxation

Relaxation is another good way to help your body heal as efficiently as it possibly can. The more efficient your body equals the quicker you can get back to playing. There are so many different relaxation techniques and you have to find the one that fits you the best. Examples are yoga, meditation, breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and many others. Later on, I will break down the ones that I like to use the most and how to use them. 

Firstly, for this basic intro. I want to talk about square breathing. It is easy to remember. In short, Hold a breath, inhale, hold a breath, and exhale for the same amount of time on all sides. Usually, I suggest starting with 3-second intervals so that you can get the process down.

Confidence Building

Confidence building will be important throughout the healing process. It will be vitally important once you get closer to your return date. Fear is going to be popping in and out throughout but will probably intensify when you are starting to do things similar to what caused your initial injury. All of the above skills will help to build your confidence. Learning what you cannot control and how you can impact the things that you have control over also will help. 

One thing that you may not be expecting at this point is all the negative talk that you will be telling yourself throughout. “I can’t do this.” “This is too hard.” “I’m a failure.”  “Why me.” etc. There will be a lot of them and you realize them when they come. Eventually, you need to learn to do is to take those thoughts and make them positive. “This injury sucks” needs to change to “This injury is making me better”. It is not always easy when you are in the midst of a mental battle.

You have to get from one side to the other so I suggest stepping-stone thoughts. These are the stepping stones that will get you from the negative to the positive. Firstly, this injury sucks becomes this injury is just a block. Secondly, changes to this injury is improving. Thirdly, changes to this injury is allowing me to work on my weaknesses. Finally, becomes this injury is making me a better athlete.

When you have a negative thought write it down, then write down the positive thought that you want to have, and finally write the steps that will get you there. Go and visit Negativity Flush to flush these negative thoughts. Then visit the Positivity Climb to encourage positive thoughts to flow as they climb up the mountain to return.

Control the injury and have a better recovery.

As I said at the beginning and as you know from experience…INJURIES SUCK! But they will not define you. You have to ability right now to decide whether you let the injury control the outcome or will you control the injury and the outcome.

Learn more about what my hopes are for this blog and what I want to you gain from reading these blogs by checking out the What is an ELEVATED sports injury page. With this in mind leave any comments and questions about what you are struggling with in your injury. This is a space where everyone understands what you are going through.