Where do I start on this one!!!!
There are so many different responses to an injury, and everyone has different coping strategies when it comes to dealing with an injury. Some of the main emotional responses to an injury are: sadness, being super frustrated, feelings of isolation, feeling a loss of identity, lack of motivation, sleep disturbance and anger.
These are to be expected when you are not doing the things you love to do, no different to taking a child into the sweet shop and telling them they aren’t allowed any sweets!
I could waffle on for hours about the psychological effects of having an injury, but I shall try and keep it to the point, look at a few of the above topics and finish with some coping strategies that have helped me and may help you, if you ever suffer an injury.
Anger and frustration – oh boy, the anger that comes with it! Constantly saying to yourself, ‘why did this happen to me?’ ‘If only I had done x, y & z’, even blaming everyone around you for something that is no one’s fault apart from just a bit of bad luck!
This goes hand in hand with being super super frustrated at not being able to do the things you love to do or lift the weights you know you are capable of lifting pre-injury. If you have a group of friends who you train in the gym with or if you are in a sports team and all of your friends are training, there is nothing more frustrating than seeing everyone else doing all the things you wish you were doing.
Take an athlete for example, their life normally revolves around training, matches, events and competitions, which means the majority of their social circle will be involved in the sport they are currently unable to do! This can lead to a loss of identity and feelings of isolation, this can lead onto a huge lack of motivation, with one of the most common phrases being said to yourself ‘what’s the point?’ This can have a huge impact on your recovery, as the lack of motivation will prolong how long you are out of the game for.
This can also be the case for someone that just enjoys a workout. As we have touched on in previous articles and social posts, exercise is a great stress reliever, so when you have had a bad day there is nothing better than hitting the gym or smashing out a workout to relieve the stress of that day! So, what do you do if you can’t do that? You then become stressed out after your day at work, stressed at the fact you can’t work out and even more stressed that you’re stressed in the first place, and it is just a huge ball of stressy mess! This can then hinder your recovery, you could start feeling more fatigued, have sleep disturbances, muscle aches and pains, chest pains and high blood pressure, in other words potentially undoing all the good you were doing when you were working out!
So, what can we do about all the emotions that you feel with an injury?
Firstly, know that what you are feeling is totally normal, and it is important not to block those feelings out. Don’t hold them in, talk to people about how you are feeling.
Having been through injuries recently and still undoing treatment for them, I have been through every emotion listed above and still am in a way.
For me personally, social support is the key! To have people that just got it! They knew how I was feeling, and they have done every possible to get me through it, even when you have a severe lack of motivation, you are angry AT THEM for no other reason than for just being angry and frustrated at the fact you can’t do everything you could a few weeks or months ago. However, it is these people that will get you through.
If you are in a sports team or an athlete and your life revolved around training and competitions, there is no reason why you can’t go along to the training sessions, you may not be able to do any sport specific training, but there is nothing stopping you doing your rehab exercises, or other types of training that could help with your chosen sport with your friends and teammates, this will give you back your identity that you feel like you lost, and you are still socialising with your friends, so no longer feeling so isolated, so when they talk about something that happened in training you won’t be missing out as you were there just not doing the same drills as them. Same with the gym or workouts, fitness facilities can be a very social place, even though you can’t go in and do your original workout, why not go in and do your rehab exercises or if you have an injury to the lower extremities, why not work on your upper body and vice versa (it is always best to speak to a specialist to ensure the exercise you will be doing will not affect your injury or find out what adaptions you could use). It is only going to benefit you in the long run by speeding up your recovery.
There are so many other options to help you on the road to recover as well, including:
Realistic goal setting – focus on setting small goals to get you to your main goal, which is ultimately the conclusion of rehab! Focus on physical goals, psychological goals, performance goals, split these into daily goals (i.e. rehab exercises which need to be completed).
Be optimistic – this can be the hardest to get your head around – accept the new norm, at least temporarily, redirect the time you spent working out on to your rehab exercises, eat right, keep your diet in check, you might not be burning as many calories as you were when you were at full fitness (more to come on this in the coming weeks), don’t obsess over lost results which is very hard to do when you can see no light at the end of the tunnel, however, there is a light no matter how dull or how far away it seems, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.
Focus on the present – OK, so you can’t work out at the moment, or lift the weights you were lifting, so what can you do today? You could do your rehab exercises, you can ensure your diet is on point, meal plan for the next week. Focus on what you can control.
Accept help and support – talk to the people closest to you, tell them how you are feeling, they may not be able to fix your injury, but they can be a shoulder to cry on, or they can be the listening ear that you need! You never know they may have been through something similar, and you didn’t know about it!
If you need any help or advice on how to cope with a sports injury, or need adaptions to your current workouts to enable you to recover from your injury, speak to a member of Team SF: info@spikefitness.co.uk