Point blank - injuries suck.
Forget about the initial pain, the lack of ability to practice your sport and live your life normally can be crushing.
They’re also inevitable. No serious athlete I know, in any sport, has gone 100% injury free, it’s a part of the game.
What counts is what we do when it happens.
Being a lifelong athlete means being able to traverse these challenges with grace.
My inspiration for this piece comes from an injury I recently sustained. It sparked my reflection on other instances of injuries in my parkour career. I noticed a pattern emerge where each time I got injured, I learned valuable lessons about not just sport but life. Coming back stronger seems to be a part of the pattern.
There are a few stages athletes go through when they recover from an injury stronger than before.
- Stillness.
The first moments of an injury are visceral. In this time there’s only one mission - SLOW DOWN. That means the breath, physical movements and mental chatter.
The best thing to do is be with the sensations. Express however is needed, but resist the urge to panic. While adrenaline is coursing through the body, we may not know the true severity (or lack of) so it is best to stop all activity as soon as possible. - Analysis.
As the adrenaline and initial shock subsides we can begin to analyze what happened. Getting to this stage could take five minutes, or multiple hours, depending on the incident. Now we can look back and ask “What happened?”. We have to be careful that we reflect with a positive and growth oriented mindset. An untrained mind may go into self blame or displacement of responsibility entirely. Both of which are unhealthy.
The experienced athlete knows every injury is a lesson to be learned. Was the technique off? Was the warmup adequate? Was I focused?
We analyze to suffice the logical mind and learn from our mistakes. - Rest and Recovery
In the Chinese Medicine and Taoist tradition, life consists of two primary forces - Yin and Yang. Yang is considered the masculine polarity, to Yin’s feminine, but that’s the topic of another conversation…
We athletes love Yang. That overt, “GO, GO, GO” energy. Its the hard training, the big moments, the achievements. The big shiny obvious stuff.
We athletes need to learn to love Yin. Yin represents all which is unseen, still and experienced through sensation. In an athletic context this is feeling into the body’s signals, recovery practices like mobilization/ myofascial release and often times - straight up doing nothing.When injured, we have no choice but to Yin out. We have to refrain from normal activity, slow all the way down and allow the brilliance of the body to heal us from the inside.
The time spent healing is a great opportunity to take up new skills that wouldn’t normally be considered.
When I broke my arm in 8th grade, my parents introduced me to mindfulness. We would do gentle yoga, meditate, go on slow walks and talk about the mysteries of life.
That depth, that richness became available to me directly BECAUSE I hurt myself and had extra time on hand.
To this day I am grateful for those moments. - Gradual reintegration
Returning to activity is so exciting… and if we’re not careful, we can get hurt again.
It’s crucial to slowly readapt to normal athletic levels. This looks like doing PT/ exercise rehabilitation and training sport at submaximal capacity. Feeling into what the body can and can not yet handle.
Often post recovery, the athlete is at a lower performance level than before injury and its common to be frustrated. Let me offer a shift in perspective. Progress is never linear. If it seems like it is, it wont stay that way for long..! To me sports are a personal journey. Being an athlete means being in a dynamic relationship to oneself. It doesn’t always matter how flashy “progress” may look on the outside, because the context, the story, the journey is what matters most.
I highly recommend celebrating the small victories along the way. - New Perspective and Horizons
This whole process required patience, diligence and emotional maturity. What a great set of skills for life!
Not to mention the gratitude!
Think back to the last time you had a stuffed up nose and then it went away. I’m sure you really appreciated the simple pleasure of cleared sinuses and your body’s ability to almost miraculously heal ailments.
It’s true, the body is the greatest piece of technology that has ever existed.
As they say, “Fall hard, fall forward”. It’s the best way we learn.
Thank you for reading, I hope you take these tips and make them your own!
