The Evils of Injury

Getting injured twice in the same area? The end all. The beginning of fear. There are two lessons to be learned when dealing with pain/injury.

Lesson 1: Fear- distrust of your body, yourself, your capabilities, your abilities

Lesson 2: Thankfulness- becoming aware of your strength and power and recognizing your capabilities not as limitations but as being infinite. Athletes are known to be mentally strong, defying the presumed natural limitations of the common man. However when injuries arise, they become self-aware.

Lesson 1 is often chosen leading to the deterioration of the athlete's confidence and faith in herself/himself and their sport. Why is Lesson 1 chosen? Self-preservation. Protection. When you bang your hand against a table, you do not stand boldly and say, "ha! My opportunity to grow is now!" No, you curl up and coddle the hand as your mind is flooded with messages of pain. Your brain tries to make sense and cope with what occurred as the damaged hand throbs and swells. Yes self-preservation. A natural human response.

Lesson 2 comes into play when the athlete is challenged by their coach or doc to push through and stay focused on the big picture. If no coach is present, the athlete must find a way to diminish the value of the injury by recognizing the true value of the dream. Lesson 2 requires you to be thankful of the journey and your progress thus far. You hurt your leg? Fine. Remember how strong it was and recognize your other leg has retained its strength. Understand the injury is a pit stop along your journey rather than the destination. From this perspective, the state of your injured leg is temporary. Speaking of pit stop consider this: in NASCAR, drivers make a mad dash to the pit to get tires changed, engine checked out, the works. Whatever the issues the car has experienced throughout the race, the pit team tends to it. The stop takes all of 5-10secs. The race takes 30min to an hour.

I write this post while thinking of my own experiences. I'm working with a young athlete and helping her to rebuild her hamstring. She runs cross country and the 1500m. Hurt her ham in the 400m. Don't ask. She said to me, "this is my second time on the same leg. I'm not running track anymore." I found myself talking differently than I do myself. Helping her to get past that negative self-talk by focusing on lesson 2. In so doing, I inspired myself. I told her, "the the exact moment an injury occurs, the healing process begins." Perhaps it's time for me to retrain my mind and focus again on the journey.