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Is your mind playing Follow the Leader or is it playing Catch-up? These are your two options when you have an injury. If you are playing Follow the Leader your mind is in control. It is guiding your body into healing. If you are playing Catch-up your mind could be slowing your progress forward. So, you need to figure out which one you want to play.

If your physical health is in control your mental health will suffer. If your mindset is in control your physical health will follow.

Physical Health Equals Mental Health

Your physical health and mental health go hand in hand. Think about when your injury first happened. What were the first couple of moments like? And the first couple of days?

Your body got hurt and your mind started questioning everything, right? 

• Why me?
• Why now?
• This sucks.
• Sadness
• Anxiety
• Fear
• Anger
• What other feelings?

Your physical health diminished and your mental health followed quickly after.

A Better Recovery-Mental Control

To achieve a BETTER RECOVERY your mental skills need to be on the rise so that your physical health can continue to get better.

I’m sure that you have heard that rehab isn’t going to be easy and that there will be ups and downs. I know that I tell my athletes that, so when there are inevitable setbacks they will be ready to handle them. At some point, your body is going to make a U-Turn and really start getting better. Your mindset will also make a U-Turn. You’ll have a few more times that you have to make U-Turns. But, the first one is the most important. 

If you are playing Follow the Leader and your mind makes the U-Turn first, your physical U-Turn can be easier and sooner. But, if you are playing Catch-up then your body will turn whenever it is ready and your mentality will continue to be behind and drag down your physical health. Which one comes first is up to you.

Mental Catch-up

If you are playing Catch-up you are allowing your physical health to control everything that you are going through. You are letting the injury control you instead of controlling the injury. This is fine and you will still recover. But, the recovery won’t be as good as it could be. 

Continuing to allow the injury to be in-charge means that you will continue to have a lot of negative thoughts about the injury and your return. “I can’t do this.” “This is too hard.” “I’m a failure.”  “Why me.” etc. Do any of those sound familiar to you?

These negative thoughts will continue to slow your progress. Every exercise that you can’t complete will become a negative thought and that negative thought will keep you from trying that exercise again. And if you don’t keep pushing forward in the exercises your healing will be slowed.

Mental Follow the Leader

If your mind is playing Follow the Leader then you are in charge of your injury. Your mindset will be front and center and you will be able to capitalize on the positives that happen. But, importantly you will be able to take the negatives in stride. 

The negative thoughts that were brought up in the last section will not be able to pull you down as far as they do when you are playing Catch up. The “I can’t” statements will become “I will” statements. Statements around “I’m a failure” can become statements of “I’ll succeed”. 

The ups and downs that are associated with the injury-healing process are a little less damaging. The valleys of the Follow the Leader mindset can be as high as the peaks of the Catch-up mindset. They will also be slightly better than those of a standard recovery.

Stepping Stone To Control

So, how do you get your mind to play Follow the Leader? You use what I call stepping-stone thoughts to help get your mind out of a negative thought cycle and into a positive thought cycle instead. 

It is not always easy when you are in the midst of a mental battle to go from negative to positive. 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 read more about knowing what you can control in the Injured Athlete Basics.

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.

Final Thoughts

Your mind and your injury are playing the same game; but, they aren’t necessarily playing together right now. Anything that changes your physical recovery (negative or positive) impacts your mental state to deal with the recovery. Also, anything that affects your mindset (positive or negative) will impact how your body heals. 

You CANNOT control your body’s healing; your body is going to heal at its own rate. 

But, you can control your mindset. Your mindset will affect your body’s healing rate.

One of the simplest ways to make sure that you are focusing on positive thoughts is to write everything down. You will start by writing down mainly negative thoughts and that is okay, it is actually good. As you progress and learn to utilize stepping-stone you will start to write down more positive thoughts. As you have more positive thoughts you find that your body is healing a lot more efficiently than it was when you were having regular negative thoughts. 

What kind of injury recovery do you want? 

A Catch-up injury.

Where your physical injury is leading the way and dragging down your mental health until finally, you reach the point in rehab where you are starting to get back to what you love. 

Follow the Leader injury.

Where your mindset is in control and you can be more positive than negative. And when you are having negative thoughts you can quickly stop that thought and start to change it into something positive. 

Hopefully, you want the latter and will continue to follow along and learn techniques that will keep your mind playing Floow the Leader while your injury is the one playing Catch Up. Either way you choose to go your body will continue to heal and you will recover. But, you may have a slower recovery. You deserve a BETTER RECOVERY let your mind help you get there.

*Medical Disclaimer*

As usual, do everything with caution. Check in with your physical therapist or athletic trainer. Make sure that you are not pushing yourself past the limits that they have setup for you. Imagery can help you have a better recovery. But, if you go too hard that may stale your progress.