If You’re an Athlete, You Will Get Injured. How Well You Fare on Your Recovery Journey Comes Down to Perception.
The following is adapted from Play Forever by Kevin R. Stone.
No matter how careful you are, all athletes get injured, and the odds are that at some point in your life, you will too — the steepness of the odds tied, of course, to the particular sports you engage in.
Perception of your injury and of yourself as a fit athlete plays a crucial role in how well you recover from your injury and what happens to your fitness levels. It’s not just about repairing yourself physically. Your mind is instrumental to how well you fare on the recovery journey.
Adopt a Resilient Mindset
The best athletes use injury as an excuse to come back better than they were before they were hurt. Others may not be able to do so, often due in part to an inability to let go of the self-image they are attached to.
We tend to become tethered to our own models of ourselves — images we then broadcast to others. Remaining open to multiple visions of our athletic selves, rather than fixing on a static portrait, makes us more resilient and able to bounce back from injury.
The severity of injuries varies. There are injuries that leave people with significant disabilities, and others that just take a long time to heal. Most injuries heal on their own or can be repaired.
Surgeons and therapists can control many but not all of the outcomes. While it used to be said that after the initial intervention by the medical and surgical team, the rest was up to the patient, the reality is that the “rest” is actually quite susceptible to intervention by caregivers.
Take an Honest Inventory of Yourself
Before you get injured — meaning, now — spend some time thinking about your image of your athletic self. What do you see?
Are you fitter than you have ever been? Are you muscular, toned, trim, and powerful? Are you a couch potato? Are you the image of yourself in your youth, or the image of your parents? Of all the things about yourself that you take for granted, what would it be like if you lost just one of these qualities, or even two?
Next, ask several objective people to assess you — a trainer, a physical therapist, or a coach. Really take an honest inventory of your physical attributes and skills. Then, look at all the sports and activities that you don’t do, and widen your vision of yourself in the athletic world.
Almost nobody does this unless they are competing to make a team and a coach takes the time to share his or her assessments. You might have been trying out for a quarterback position, but the coach may see your potential as a running back, to use a football analogy.
If you do this self-analysis, you may refine your own picture of yourself and your potential. This becomes phenomenally helpful if you get injured, because your options have increased.
Maintain a Flexible Self-Image
After people are injured, I see a wide range of responses. These are often based on the person’s flexibility in thinking about themselves — including their ability to absorb the loss, take inventory of what is and isn’t available to work with, and how they will engage in a recovery program. Those people for whom a realistic self-imagery is absent, or who stay locked into one vision, are often seriously hampered by their injuries.
Your caregivers play an important role in assisting you in developing your other selves. If they are tethered to an image of you as a patient — an image they may form on first meeting you — they may not bring a commitment to the care that achieves your goals. But the physicians, surgeons, and therapists who treat you as a person with infinite potential will start you down the road of becoming a better athlete — though maybe different — than you were before you were injured.
These caregivers will repair your injuries in order to facilitate a return to sports. They focus their words and actions on partnering with you to set new goals, and bring creativity and inventiveness to the science and practice of medicine. This partnership in injury recovery, if directed not just at recovery but at improvement, determines the final outcome for many.
With the Right Perception, You Will Excel
Those who have the flexibility to see themselves as athletes-in-training for the same or a new sport, despite their injury, excel. Those who engage the care team with a shared vision excel even more.
Yes, developing a range of new conceptions of ourselves requires insight and imagination. But untethering our self-imagery to allow these new models prepares us for the unexpected.
Why wait? You might even try on your other selves before you get hurt.
For more advice on how to recover from injuries and stay fit your entire life, you can find Play Forever on Amazon.
Kevin R. Stone, MD, is an orthopaedic surgeon at The Stone Clinic and Chairman of the Stone Research Foundation. Trained at Harvard University in both internal medicine and orthopaedic surgery and at Stanford University in general surgery, he is a world-renowned expert in biologic joint replacement.
Dr. Stone has served the US Ski Team, the US Pro Ski Tour, the Marin Ballet, the Smuin Ballet, the Modern Pentathlon at the US Olympic Festival, and the US Olympic Training Center. His innovative work in the orthopaedic arena has led to multiple awards, publications, and grants and has resulted in approximately fifty issued US patents.
