Coping with Injury

In sport, it is inevitable that you will face an injury, setback or time away from the sport. The time away from their sport can feel catastrophic and the athlete can face a wide range of emotions and pressure. The internal pressure from the athlete can be the desire to return to competing as quickly as possible and therefore doing more than the advice from the physiotherapist or the external pressure of the manager wanting the athlete to return as quickly as possible as they are a key member of the team.

Or unfortunately from a financial viewpoint of the club, that they are ‘wasting’ money when they player is injured. An injury will more often than not be a setback and has been explored extensively due to the amount of injuries and wellbeing of the athletes. When an injury is career ending, a different approach will need to be taken.

However, with non-career ending injuries and setbacks, helping the athlete manage their thoughts and able to simply cope with these moments is vitally important. 

Described below are some practical psychological strategies for a sport psychology consultant to use with an athlete to allow them to cope better with an injury or a setback in sport.  

1)    Setback Analysis: Injuries are common with athletes and they will face times when they’ll need to come back. During these moments, they’ll build and update their coping mechanisms and may gain a wider perspective. When athletes look back, they will tell you that they had learnt far more from failing at something than they ever did when they had won something. 

Athletes will need time to hurt and rant about this setback, and at times confide in people about their thoughts and feelings. The athlete should explore the things that they can control during this setback and start to consider the steps they’ll need to take and how they would like to approach this. The famous phrase of ‘control the controllables’ comes to mind.

Over time and when they have recovered from this injury or setback, they can reflect on this process and see what they could do to improve for next time. 

2)    Goal Setting: Take your recovery as seriously as you do training to help recover as best as possible. In terms of recovering from injury and the process by which you can do this – check with physios who will help and make sure you stick to their advice from the physiological perspective.  

From a sport psychology perspective, you can use these strategies in this article and get in contact with a sport psychology consultant who are trained to help with the process. Also, check in with your season’s goals. They may need to be adapted to take into account the time off with injury, if it is a long-term spell out.

This could be a perfect time (if you can make light out of the situation) to evaluate your progress so far and to see if you had been on target to reach your goals or whether they were too unrealistic and can evaluate your process.

Check to see how SMART (Specific, measurable, achievable/attainable, reachable/realistic, timed) your goals are. 

3)    Psychological Skills Training: One side you can train is your mental skills for example, imagery (scripts you could create others to improve other aspects of your game), self-talk phrases, relaxation and arousal strategies and reflect on how you use them. Use a sport psychology consultant to find out more. 

4)    Knowing or checking in with your why: Everyone’s motivation is different. Our upbringing, personality traits, previous and current actions and environment and values all play a part.

Understanding where our motivation comes from and being aware of how it is on show when we are thinking and performing in our lives and in sport can be really valued, particularly if we are struggling or aren’t preforming to our best. 

One way for the athlete to discover and check in with their ‘why’ is by free writing. Grab something to write with, a notebook and 20 minutes where you won’t be disturbed. You should answer the question:

Why do I compete in my sport? 

(If you struggle, some additional guidance below)
- How do you feel ahead of a competition?
- What would you like to feel at the end of a game? 
- When you feel flow and good when playing, what goes on in your mind? 
- What gives you that sporting buzz? 
- Upon retirement, what would I liked to have achieved?

 5)    Become a self-expert – training, performance preferences, strengths and weaknesses: An athlete, over time, can become an expert in their sport, but also how they personally behave within their sport. They learn about their preferences in all aspects of the game and what they are good at and what they need to improve on.

Becoming further aware of these preferences, strengths, weaknesses and fears is a great way for them to gain further authority on themselves so they can plan, adapt and succeed in their sporting environment. In life there can be big stressors, such as exams, moving to a different place, problems with relationships and this can negatively affect someone’ wellbeing.

In a study by Hanton et al (2005) identified up to 93 stressors which could have a negative impact on performance and an accumulation of these stressors could increase the negative influence. Therefore, identifying these small stressors and how to combat them could prove to be beneficial. Here are some area to consider: 

-       Performance – preparation, injury, pressure, opponents, self, event superstitions. 

-       Environmental – selection, finances, training/competition environment, accommodation, travel, safety.

-       Personal – nutrition, injury, goals and expectations. 

-       Leadership – coaches / coaching style. 

-       Team – atmosphere, support, roles communication. 

 

References:

Hanton, S., Fletcher, D., & Coughlan, G. (2005). Stress in elite sport performers: A comparative study of competitive and organizational stressors. Journal of sports sciences23(10), 1129-1141.

George Mitchell