Post by mrbeefy on Jun 21, 2008 22:32:37 GMT -5
Mental Training in Injury Management
Mental training modalities have been widely used to improve sport performance and even injury prevention and rehabilitation. In 1912, the U.S. Olympic team traveled by ship to Stockholm, Sweden for the Olympic Games. Among this group was Jim Thorpe, who would eventually win the gold medal in the decathlon. Following this impressive victory he was described as the world’s greatest athlete by the Kings of Sweden. A Native American, Jim Thorpe would eventually be recognized as one of the greatest athletes of the century. It is easy to imagine the extent to which travel aboard a ship limited training opportunities and served as a great source of frustration to the athletes as they slowly made their way to Sweden. One day, Thorpe was observed sitting quietly on deck, his eyes cast downward, seemingly lost in thought. He was asked if there was a problem. He responded that there was not and pointed out that he had made two marks on the deck separated by a carefully measured distance. He added that this was his goal for the long jump at the Olympic Games and that he was preparing mentally for the jump. He went on to jump the same exact distance at the Games as he had mentally trained to do.
The benefits of the use of a broad range of psychological self-regulation procedures in athletic settings are generally well recognized. Although sometimes regarded as a contemporary phenomenon, mental training has roots in some ancient meditative traditions (Heil, 1984). Although some mental training approaches use traditional meditative methods, techniques have been drawn largely from the methods of behavioral and cognitive psychology initially developed for clinical populations. From whatever tradition derived, mental training methods usually include some combination of the following:
- Relaxation training, which develops increased body awareness, deepens muscular relaxation at rest, and increases muscular efficiency during performance.
- Mental imagery, which uses the imagination to create a private “theater of the mind” where sport situations can be rehearsed and replayed.
- Self-talk, whereby a person uses usually cryptic assertive statements or affirmations to improve confidence or focus attention. Alternately, self-talk may be used to stop or modify thoughts that are detrimental to performance.
- Biofeedback, which typically relies on psychophysiological instrumentation to provide quick, accurate feedback about subtle changes in muscle tension or other autonomically meditated events. This increases self-awareness and helps the user develop a greater sense of self-control.
- Hypnosis, which relies on careful focusing of attention so that the practitioner can use suggestions about confidence, coping with stress, and athletic performance to guide behavior. Autogenic training is a popular variant of hypnosis.
The use of psychological self-regulation skills as mental training is a cornerstone in the emergence of an applied sport psychology. Mental training techniques have been found to influence metabolic parameters, endurance, and muscular strength as well as motor skills, presumably through effects on the cognitive-symbolic processes that underlie these skills (Dishman, 1987; Druckman & Bjork, 1991). The use of mental training is growing not only with athletes but with other performance-oriented populations such as performing artists. These same self-regulation procedures are of demonstrated utility in the management of pain and the psychological sequelae of injury in general medical populations (Turk et al., 1983). However, within the sport setting, relatively little attention has been devoted to the use of these methods in injury (Samples, 1987).
The fundamental skills upon which virtually all mental training is based include manipulations of behavioral processes and of cognitive processes. It is useful to think of cognition as composed of two distinct modes: picture-like and word-like thought. In most sport and injury situations there is a practical advantage to the use of picture-like cognitions (imagery training) as opposed to word-like cognitions (Orlick & Partington, 1988). The picture-like mode allows the athlete to focus on relevant visual and motor cues as they unfold in the moment; thus it is useful to conceive of this mode as a language for action. Imagery-based methods essentially cultivate the creation of an inner theater where any of life’s dramas, including rehabilitation, may be played. Combinations of techniques with varied applications to different sport and rehabilitation situations constitute a mental training program. This program must be individualized to suit the constraints of the injury situation and the mind-set of the athlete.
Generalization and automatization are essential elements in the development of a systematic mental training program. The athlete must generalize mental skills from the ideal conditions under which they are most easily learned and are typically practiced to the more challenging situations presented by sport or rehabilitation. Although mental training skills are most easily learned during conditions of autonomic and motoric quiet, they must be used in high stress, action-oriented situations. The athlete must also automatize skills so that their application becomes a natural aspect of performance. In addition to longer massed practice routines, distributed approaches are recommended. Approaches that incorporate variety, novelty, and progressive approach to skill learning help maintain interest and motivation.
Steadman (1982) emphasized the importance of maintaining continuity of training even during injury. For example, a bodybuilder with a leg injury should not neglect the rest of his or her body and should still train regularly with uninjured bodyparts. Continued mental training is a natural extension of this principle; it helps the athlete maintain readiness for return to play and to remain in a performance-oriented mindset. The athlete can maintain fundamental arousal control and attention control and psychomotor skills through continued routine mental practice, which also helps the athlete take his or her mind off of pain and fear. Mental rehearsal techniques can help athletes anticipate and deal with the challenges of rehabilitation (Rotella, 1982). Rehabilitation rehearsal may be used early in the treatment process in anticipation of a particularly challenging course of rehabilitation or where early signs of difficulty in psychological adjustment consistently occur.
Whether the way one thinks about injury influences the healing process is a matter of long-standing speculation. It is intuitively held that those with hopeful, positive attitudes tend to recover more quickly and completely. Research in psychoneuroimmunology and the disease-prone personality has raised interesting questions regarding the role of psychological factors both in resistance to disease and in the healing of active disease states (Friedman and Booth-Kewley, 1987; McCabe & Schneiderman, 1984).Reported benefits from the use of healing images in the management of cancer have created a great deal of interest (Achterberg & Lawlis, 1978). This method uses vivid images to represent disease or injury, the physiological coping mechanisms, and the effects of treatment. These images are presented in a drama of healing played out in the in theater of the mind. This method essentially involves the creation of a metaphorical anatomy that may be either relatively realistic or more personalized and fantasy based. For example, this author imagines the physiological actions occurring within the myofibrils of a muscle fiber while resistance training. The fundamental assumption underlying the use of this approach is that the healing image in some way empowers the organism. Creation of effective healing and healed imagery scenarios is facilitated by the following:
- Use of the athlete’s personal imagery of injury and pain.
- Use of the athlete’s imagery of the healing process.
- The athlete’s knowledge of the biological mechanisms of injury and healing, and the ability to describe these as vivid images.
- Identification of coping strategies that the athlete uses intuitively.
Biofeedback
Biofeedback is a self-regulation technique in which auditory or visual feedback provides information about biological functions not usually available to a persons awareness (Schwartz, 1987). These functions include autonomically mediated activity as well as skeletal muscular function lost or diminished through injury. Commonly used measures include heart rate and brain wave activity. Timely and precise feedback of fluctuations in these biological functions increases the athlete’s awareness of the specific circumstances and behaviors that lead to change. However, biofeedback is of only limited utility in the absence of a specific cognitive strategy that guides change (Meichenbaum, 1976). Application of biofeedback in sport performance is growing (Petruzzello et al., 1991; Sandweiss & Wolf, 1985; Zaichowski & Fuchs, 1988). Electromyographic (EMG) biofeedback offers varied applications with the healthy and injured athlete. It has brought about improvements in both fine and gross motor performance, probably through the reduction in the psychomotor manifestations of performance laxation, muscle reeducation, and discrimination training. However, only muscle reeducation has a well-developed tradition of research and application with injury (Fernando & Basmajian, 1978).
Using muscular feedback to reduce tension can speed recovery. For example, it can optimize recovery between repetitions and sets during resistance training and it can also serve as an antidote to muscular bracing or guarding. A generalized global relaxation or feedback from specific muscle groups allows more efficient use of the muscles through improved awareness and reduction of chronic tension-holding patterns. The athlete may generalize skills to sport or rehabilitation by using EMG biofeedback in conjunction with an imagery-based coping rehearsal of circumstances that illicit bracing or guarding.
Mental Training Approaches to Pain Management
Pain is the most common and compelling aspect of rehabilitation. Pain and to a lesser extent fear are always on the psychological agenda of rehabilitation. How well the athlete deals with these is a good measure of how effective rehabilitation will be. The critical importance of coping with pain and fear is most apparent when the athlete returns to play.
Bodybuilders and other athletes tend to be highly in tune with their bodies and are able to identify different types of pain. Pain due to lactic acid buildup is not to be confused with delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), which is a breakdown of certain proteins within the myofibril such as titin, m-protein and c-stripes. However, DOMS is not to be confused with a tearing of the contractile components of the myofibril such as actin and myosin. Tearing of these components is considered a muscle tear and can be very painful. Response to pain is highly personalized and subject to a wide range of influences. Researchers have noted that broadly based cultural factors influence pain tolerance (Kiesler & Finholt, 1988; Wolff, 1985). Sport culture shapes pain attitudes and coping is an interesting but poorly understood issue. Research suggests that athletes have a higher pain tolerance than non athletes. Further, some studies have found differences between collision-sport, such as football, and non-collision-sport, such as bodybuilding, athletes (Jaremko et al., 1981; Walker, 1971). As of late, it is unclear to what degree pain tolerance is a natural selection factor versus a learned aspect of sport participation.
The physiology of pain is described in A Comprehensive Physiological Breakdown of Acute Trauma.
Pain Management Strategies
A broad variety of self-regulation skills have proven beneficial in pain management. Turk (1984, 1986) identified six categories of pain management techniques: external focus of attention, pleasant imaginings, neutral imaginings, rhythmic cognitive activity, pain acknowledging, and dramatized coping. The external focus of attention strategy involved directing one’s attention away from the pain and toward environmental events. In pleasent imaginings the athlete employs an internal focus of attention on pleasant imagery. In the neutral imaginings strategy, there is an internal focus on neutral events. With rhythmic cognitive activity the athlete engages in a repetitive mental task, which can include the use of repetitive phrases. The pain-acknowledging strategy involves a reinterpretation of pain or a shift away from an ordinary style of attention; for example, the athlete may focus closely on the sensation itself and attempt to accentuate its multisensory quality, may imagine anesthesia at the site of pain or may cultivate a sense of detachment from the pain. In dramatized coping, the athlete creates a fantasy scenario, imagining pain as occurring in different circumstances than is actually the case. Outlined below is an overview of each of these strategies.
External focus of attention
· General – Listening to music; focusing on the horizon
· Sport – Concentrating on the ball; attending to environmental cues that are related to sport performance
Pleasant imaginings
· General – Imagining relaxing on the beach; imagining being at a favorite place or with a favorite person
· Sport – Imagining the feeling of having performed a task well; imagining celebrating with others following a victory
Neutral imaginings
· Thinking of a routine activity like walking up the steps, or imagining nonemotive events
· Sport – Imagining calmly dressing before or after a competition or practice
Rhythmic cognitive activity
· General – Counting backward from 100, repeating a neutral mantra or self-affirmation
· Sport – Coordinating breathing with activity; making repetitive performance or pain coping self-affirmations
Pain acknowledging
· General – Imagining generalized feelings of anesthesia, imagining pain being moved away from an area of the body through circulation of the blood (this writers favorite!), observing pain with a sense of emotional detachment
· Sport – Imagining lactic acid buildup as inducing numbness without pain, perceiving pain as a positive sign of effort
Dramatized coping
· General – Seeing oneself in pursuit of a heroic task in which tolerance of pain is associated with personal triumph
· Sport – Imagining pain experienced during rehabilitation as occurring in conjunction with outstanding athletic achievement
Conclusions
Many of the greatest personal losses and victories in sport and performance are played out quietly in the battle with injury. Phidippides was not the first, and he certainly was not the last. The psychology if sport injury is built on a set of principles that have come from a synthesis of sport psychology, behavioral medicine, and sports medicine. All athletes should remember the following points. This writer encourages every athlete reading this publication to print a copy of the following bullet points to have with them, especially during a time of injury.
· Managing injury effectively (avoiding injury initially and recovering well following injury) is an essential aspect of the game that every athlete must play well in order to succeed
· Injury rehabilitation is a performance task, the effectiveness of which relies on much the same skills as used in sport performance
· Just as relatively small changes in behavior in sport can significantly impact performance, so do small changes in behavior significantly impact rehabilitation
· Speedy, effective return to play depends not only on physical function but also on psychological status. The athlete whose injury is physically healed but who is not mentally ready to return to play is not yet recovered
· The goals of treatment are to reduce the psychological impact of injury, to help the athlete maintain a performance-oriented mental set, and to speed readiness for return to play. This implies benefits from intervention, even in the absence of evident adjustment problems
· Optimal injury management requires a proactive program that incorporates a psychological approach to routine rehabilitation as well as early identification and treatment of adjustment problems
· Risk taking is an inherent part of sport. It is often an important motive for participation, and is a fundamental right and responsibility of the athlete; facts upon which treatment decisions must be made
· The pillars of a psychological approach to rehabilitation are education, goal setting, mental training, and social support
Unfortunately, pain is an every day part of our lives, especially in sport. However, we need not be afraid, and we are to cast a hopeful eye to the future.
Revelation 21:1-8
1And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. 2And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. 4And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. 5And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. 6And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. 7He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. 8But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.
Keep it Hardcore!
Joe “Yu Yevon” King
Administrator of Hyperplasia Research
Writer for the Journal of Hyperplasia Research
Mental training modalities have been widely used to improve sport performance and even injury prevention and rehabilitation. In 1912, the U.S. Olympic team traveled by ship to Stockholm, Sweden for the Olympic Games. Among this group was Jim Thorpe, who would eventually win the gold medal in the decathlon. Following this impressive victory he was described as the world’s greatest athlete by the Kings of Sweden. A Native American, Jim Thorpe would eventually be recognized as one of the greatest athletes of the century. It is easy to imagine the extent to which travel aboard a ship limited training opportunities and served as a great source of frustration to the athletes as they slowly made their way to Sweden. One day, Thorpe was observed sitting quietly on deck, his eyes cast downward, seemingly lost in thought. He was asked if there was a problem. He responded that there was not and pointed out that he had made two marks on the deck separated by a carefully measured distance. He added that this was his goal for the long jump at the Olympic Games and that he was preparing mentally for the jump. He went on to jump the same exact distance at the Games as he had mentally trained to do.
The benefits of the use of a broad range of psychological self-regulation procedures in athletic settings are generally well recognized. Although sometimes regarded as a contemporary phenomenon, mental training has roots in some ancient meditative traditions (Heil, 1984). Although some mental training approaches use traditional meditative methods, techniques have been drawn largely from the methods of behavioral and cognitive psychology initially developed for clinical populations. From whatever tradition derived, mental training methods usually include some combination of the following:
- Relaxation training, which develops increased body awareness, deepens muscular relaxation at rest, and increases muscular efficiency during performance.
- Mental imagery, which uses the imagination to create a private “theater of the mind” where sport situations can be rehearsed and replayed.
- Self-talk, whereby a person uses usually cryptic assertive statements or affirmations to improve confidence or focus attention. Alternately, self-talk may be used to stop or modify thoughts that are detrimental to performance.
- Biofeedback, which typically relies on psychophysiological instrumentation to provide quick, accurate feedback about subtle changes in muscle tension or other autonomically meditated events. This increases self-awareness and helps the user develop a greater sense of self-control.
- Hypnosis, which relies on careful focusing of attention so that the practitioner can use suggestions about confidence, coping with stress, and athletic performance to guide behavior. Autogenic training is a popular variant of hypnosis.
The use of psychological self-regulation skills as mental training is a cornerstone in the emergence of an applied sport psychology. Mental training techniques have been found to influence metabolic parameters, endurance, and muscular strength as well as motor skills, presumably through effects on the cognitive-symbolic processes that underlie these skills (Dishman, 1987; Druckman & Bjork, 1991). The use of mental training is growing not only with athletes but with other performance-oriented populations such as performing artists. These same self-regulation procedures are of demonstrated utility in the management of pain and the psychological sequelae of injury in general medical populations (Turk et al., 1983). However, within the sport setting, relatively little attention has been devoted to the use of these methods in injury (Samples, 1987).
The fundamental skills upon which virtually all mental training is based include manipulations of behavioral processes and of cognitive processes. It is useful to think of cognition as composed of two distinct modes: picture-like and word-like thought. In most sport and injury situations there is a practical advantage to the use of picture-like cognitions (imagery training) as opposed to word-like cognitions (Orlick & Partington, 1988). The picture-like mode allows the athlete to focus on relevant visual and motor cues as they unfold in the moment; thus it is useful to conceive of this mode as a language for action. Imagery-based methods essentially cultivate the creation of an inner theater where any of life’s dramas, including rehabilitation, may be played. Combinations of techniques with varied applications to different sport and rehabilitation situations constitute a mental training program. This program must be individualized to suit the constraints of the injury situation and the mind-set of the athlete.
Generalization and automatization are essential elements in the development of a systematic mental training program. The athlete must generalize mental skills from the ideal conditions under which they are most easily learned and are typically practiced to the more challenging situations presented by sport or rehabilitation. Although mental training skills are most easily learned during conditions of autonomic and motoric quiet, they must be used in high stress, action-oriented situations. The athlete must also automatize skills so that their application becomes a natural aspect of performance. In addition to longer massed practice routines, distributed approaches are recommended. Approaches that incorporate variety, novelty, and progressive approach to skill learning help maintain interest and motivation.
Steadman (1982) emphasized the importance of maintaining continuity of training even during injury. For example, a bodybuilder with a leg injury should not neglect the rest of his or her body and should still train regularly with uninjured bodyparts. Continued mental training is a natural extension of this principle; it helps the athlete maintain readiness for return to play and to remain in a performance-oriented mindset. The athlete can maintain fundamental arousal control and attention control and psychomotor skills through continued routine mental practice, which also helps the athlete take his or her mind off of pain and fear. Mental rehearsal techniques can help athletes anticipate and deal with the challenges of rehabilitation (Rotella, 1982). Rehabilitation rehearsal may be used early in the treatment process in anticipation of a particularly challenging course of rehabilitation or where early signs of difficulty in psychological adjustment consistently occur.
Whether the way one thinks about injury influences the healing process is a matter of long-standing speculation. It is intuitively held that those with hopeful, positive attitudes tend to recover more quickly and completely. Research in psychoneuroimmunology and the disease-prone personality has raised interesting questions regarding the role of psychological factors both in resistance to disease and in the healing of active disease states (Friedman and Booth-Kewley, 1987; McCabe & Schneiderman, 1984).Reported benefits from the use of healing images in the management of cancer have created a great deal of interest (Achterberg & Lawlis, 1978). This method uses vivid images to represent disease or injury, the physiological coping mechanisms, and the effects of treatment. These images are presented in a drama of healing played out in the in theater of the mind. This method essentially involves the creation of a metaphorical anatomy that may be either relatively realistic or more personalized and fantasy based. For example, this author imagines the physiological actions occurring within the myofibrils of a muscle fiber while resistance training. The fundamental assumption underlying the use of this approach is that the healing image in some way empowers the organism. Creation of effective healing and healed imagery scenarios is facilitated by the following:
- Use of the athlete’s personal imagery of injury and pain.
- Use of the athlete’s imagery of the healing process.
- The athlete’s knowledge of the biological mechanisms of injury and healing, and the ability to describe these as vivid images.
- Identification of coping strategies that the athlete uses intuitively.
Biofeedback
Biofeedback is a self-regulation technique in which auditory or visual feedback provides information about biological functions not usually available to a persons awareness (Schwartz, 1987). These functions include autonomically mediated activity as well as skeletal muscular function lost or diminished through injury. Commonly used measures include heart rate and brain wave activity. Timely and precise feedback of fluctuations in these biological functions increases the athlete’s awareness of the specific circumstances and behaviors that lead to change. However, biofeedback is of only limited utility in the absence of a specific cognitive strategy that guides change (Meichenbaum, 1976). Application of biofeedback in sport performance is growing (Petruzzello et al., 1991; Sandweiss & Wolf, 1985; Zaichowski & Fuchs, 1988). Electromyographic (EMG) biofeedback offers varied applications with the healthy and injured athlete. It has brought about improvements in both fine and gross motor performance, probably through the reduction in the psychomotor manifestations of performance laxation, muscle reeducation, and discrimination training. However, only muscle reeducation has a well-developed tradition of research and application with injury (Fernando & Basmajian, 1978).
Using muscular feedback to reduce tension can speed recovery. For example, it can optimize recovery between repetitions and sets during resistance training and it can also serve as an antidote to muscular bracing or guarding. A generalized global relaxation or feedback from specific muscle groups allows more efficient use of the muscles through improved awareness and reduction of chronic tension-holding patterns. The athlete may generalize skills to sport or rehabilitation by using EMG biofeedback in conjunction with an imagery-based coping rehearsal of circumstances that illicit bracing or guarding.
Mental Training Approaches to Pain Management
Pain is the most common and compelling aspect of rehabilitation. Pain and to a lesser extent fear are always on the psychological agenda of rehabilitation. How well the athlete deals with these is a good measure of how effective rehabilitation will be. The critical importance of coping with pain and fear is most apparent when the athlete returns to play.
Bodybuilders and other athletes tend to be highly in tune with their bodies and are able to identify different types of pain. Pain due to lactic acid buildup is not to be confused with delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), which is a breakdown of certain proteins within the myofibril such as titin, m-protein and c-stripes. However, DOMS is not to be confused with a tearing of the contractile components of the myofibril such as actin and myosin. Tearing of these components is considered a muscle tear and can be very painful. Response to pain is highly personalized and subject to a wide range of influences. Researchers have noted that broadly based cultural factors influence pain tolerance (Kiesler & Finholt, 1988; Wolff, 1985). Sport culture shapes pain attitudes and coping is an interesting but poorly understood issue. Research suggests that athletes have a higher pain tolerance than non athletes. Further, some studies have found differences between collision-sport, such as football, and non-collision-sport, such as bodybuilding, athletes (Jaremko et al., 1981; Walker, 1971). As of late, it is unclear to what degree pain tolerance is a natural selection factor versus a learned aspect of sport participation.
The physiology of pain is described in A Comprehensive Physiological Breakdown of Acute Trauma.
Pain Management Strategies
A broad variety of self-regulation skills have proven beneficial in pain management. Turk (1984, 1986) identified six categories of pain management techniques: external focus of attention, pleasant imaginings, neutral imaginings, rhythmic cognitive activity, pain acknowledging, and dramatized coping. The external focus of attention strategy involved directing one’s attention away from the pain and toward environmental events. In pleasent imaginings the athlete employs an internal focus of attention on pleasant imagery. In the neutral imaginings strategy, there is an internal focus on neutral events. With rhythmic cognitive activity the athlete engages in a repetitive mental task, which can include the use of repetitive phrases. The pain-acknowledging strategy involves a reinterpretation of pain or a shift away from an ordinary style of attention; for example, the athlete may focus closely on the sensation itself and attempt to accentuate its multisensory quality, may imagine anesthesia at the site of pain or may cultivate a sense of detachment from the pain. In dramatized coping, the athlete creates a fantasy scenario, imagining pain as occurring in different circumstances than is actually the case. Outlined below is an overview of each of these strategies.
External focus of attention
· General – Listening to music; focusing on the horizon
· Sport – Concentrating on the ball; attending to environmental cues that are related to sport performance
Pleasant imaginings
· General – Imagining relaxing on the beach; imagining being at a favorite place or with a favorite person
· Sport – Imagining the feeling of having performed a task well; imagining celebrating with others following a victory
Neutral imaginings
· Thinking of a routine activity like walking up the steps, or imagining nonemotive events
· Sport – Imagining calmly dressing before or after a competition or practice
Rhythmic cognitive activity
· General – Counting backward from 100, repeating a neutral mantra or self-affirmation
· Sport – Coordinating breathing with activity; making repetitive performance or pain coping self-affirmations
Pain acknowledging
· General – Imagining generalized feelings of anesthesia, imagining pain being moved away from an area of the body through circulation of the blood (this writers favorite!), observing pain with a sense of emotional detachment
· Sport – Imagining lactic acid buildup as inducing numbness without pain, perceiving pain as a positive sign of effort
Dramatized coping
· General – Seeing oneself in pursuit of a heroic task in which tolerance of pain is associated with personal triumph
· Sport – Imagining pain experienced during rehabilitation as occurring in conjunction with outstanding athletic achievement
Conclusions
Many of the greatest personal losses and victories in sport and performance are played out quietly in the battle with injury. Phidippides was not the first, and he certainly was not the last. The psychology if sport injury is built on a set of principles that have come from a synthesis of sport psychology, behavioral medicine, and sports medicine. All athletes should remember the following points. This writer encourages every athlete reading this publication to print a copy of the following bullet points to have with them, especially during a time of injury.
· Managing injury effectively (avoiding injury initially and recovering well following injury) is an essential aspect of the game that every athlete must play well in order to succeed
· Injury rehabilitation is a performance task, the effectiveness of which relies on much the same skills as used in sport performance
· Just as relatively small changes in behavior in sport can significantly impact performance, so do small changes in behavior significantly impact rehabilitation
· Speedy, effective return to play depends not only on physical function but also on psychological status. The athlete whose injury is physically healed but who is not mentally ready to return to play is not yet recovered
· The goals of treatment are to reduce the psychological impact of injury, to help the athlete maintain a performance-oriented mental set, and to speed readiness for return to play. This implies benefits from intervention, even in the absence of evident adjustment problems
· Optimal injury management requires a proactive program that incorporates a psychological approach to routine rehabilitation as well as early identification and treatment of adjustment problems
· Risk taking is an inherent part of sport. It is often an important motive for participation, and is a fundamental right and responsibility of the athlete; facts upon which treatment decisions must be made
· The pillars of a psychological approach to rehabilitation are education, goal setting, mental training, and social support
Unfortunately, pain is an every day part of our lives, especially in sport. However, we need not be afraid, and we are to cast a hopeful eye to the future.
Revelation 21:1-8
1And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. 2And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. 4And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. 5And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. 6And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. 7He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. 8But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.
Keep it Hardcore!
Joe “Yu Yevon” King
Administrator of Hyperplasia Research
Writer for the Journal of Hyperplasia Research