Hard One

I had to have a pretty tough conversation with an athlete yesterday. A conversation that touched on a familiar topic, injury. It seems that this is the week for talking about injuries with people.

Whereas the conversation I had on Thursday was around whether or not somebody should train with an injury, the chat yesterday was about dealing with one. Whilst an injury takes a rather obvious toll on the body, in my experience the bigger cost is mental. Dealing with the physical side of an injury is easy, just rest and do what the doctor says. The mental side is much harder, the constant nagging doubt, the second guessing, the stress. The mental side of an injury can do much more damaged to an athlete than the physical side.

The athlete I spoke to yesterday is having a real hard time dealing wit injury and it is nearly all on the mental side.

Their story is the classic one. They are preparing for a pretty big race later in the year and so they are placing a lot of pressure on themselves to get training and get fit. Every time they aren't able to train because of the injury they feel they have lost that little bit more fitness. Each time they can't train their stress increases and their motivation decreases. From here things move into a pretty disastrous downward spiral. which looks something like this:

 - Don't train - feel bad
 - Feel bad - motivation goes down
 - Motivation goes down - don't train
 - Don't train - feel bad.
 - ......

That is the fix they currently find themselves in. Their injury is not healed, so that isn't helping. However, they have the okay from the Doctor to train and they have been given some treatment which has helped. From a physical perspective they are good to go, within limits. No, it isn't the physical which is currently hindering them, it is the mental. The spiral I mentioned above has really sucked the life and drive out of them.

The conversation I had yesterday with them went something like this. There are three choices, you can:

 - Pull the pin and cancel the race
 - You can go anyway and deal with what comes
 - You can get training again and see what we can do in the time we have left.

None of them are great options if I am honest, but it is the reality of the situation we are in. We can try or we can not, that is what is open to us from there. However, if we are going to try then we need to get back to training, need to get back do doing the work, need to find the energy again.

Finding the motivation to get back out the door can be pretty hard when you are sitting under an injury cloud. Sometimes it all seems too hard and the last thing you want to do is go and do some exercise. However, getting yourself out the door and exercising is the key. That was my advice to this athlete yesterday, get out the door and get going. It will be very hard at the start, you won't feel like doing it, you probably won't enjoy it, but you have to get out and get going anyway. Getting out and going is important because the more you do it, the easier it will become. As you get back into the training the endorphins will start flowing making you feel a bit better. As you get fitter the training will be more enjoyable. As the training becomes more enjoyable the motivation will return and you will find your groove again.The more you do of this, the easier it will become. However, none of this happens straight away, rather it all takes time and it won't happen unless you get yourself out the door in the first place.

It is certainly a tough place to be and a tougher place to get out of. But it can be done.