Recently, I have had the misfortune of one of my coached athletes getting injured. It has been really upsetting to see him becoming downhearted after seeing his Manchester marathon dreams being crushed by the injury. Not very long ago he was on cloud 9 achieving PB after PB and in a cruel twist of fate he is now out on the benches.
In these situations we have to take some learnings from them, both for the athlete and for the coach. From the athletes perspective, their world has been turned upside down it can be very depressing and cause them to withdraw as they see their friends running and enjoying themselves whilst they cannot do anything but sit and watch. It’s a horrible way to feel. Sometimes they will refuse to accept the extended time off and attempt to go out an run again too soon and cause themselves more damage. The denial can be costly, by going out too soon they can prolong the healing period, sometimes doing even more damage and resulting in more time off.
As the coach, I feel that I have some responsibility for the injuries of my athletes and it causes me to do some soul searching. Did I push them too hard? Should I have stopped them from doing extra sessions? Should I have given them more recovery time? Did they do activities on the recovery days when they should have been resting? These are questions that I ask myself, I know I am not perfect and I will sometimes make mistakes, I would be a foolish to think otherwise. But by truthfully answering these questions I can better myself and therefore service my athletes better.
First and foremost, is unquestionably the athlete. Managing the mental aspect of injury is the most important in my opinion. If the athlete becomes too withdrawn, they can retreat from the whole running community, lose their drive and become depressed. It is something which happened to me when I realised there was something more to swollen knee than I originally gave credit. I had to make the decision to retire from running until after my operation. Admittedly, I had to make the decision myself which is different from a physio telling me to, but not much. I went through those stages of denial, my knee was becoming more swollen and painful but I could ignore it whilst I was out on the run so that’s exactly what I did. Eventually, I had to accept that I needed to stop I wasn’t doing myself any favours by continuing.
The decision to stop running can be the most damaging in some respects. withdrawing from the sport you love is somewhat similar to coming off Heroin, all those highs you got from the great runs now feel like something unachievable and lost forever. You can feel like you will never see those highs again. What we do in this situation is a matter of character. When I made the decision to stop running, being the chair and only coach at TeamBR, I made it a priority to still keep doing the things I was able to do within the club. Punishment Mondays, runners prep sessions, holding events and coaching our athletes. It helped me stay focused, it helped me stay in touch with what I love and why I love it. I still talked to other runners and experienced their highs by proxy when they did well. In essence, supporting others helped me stay in love with running. If I wasn’t in TeamBR I would have probably volunteered wherever I could to stay in touch with everything. This is something I try to encourage with other injured runners, it’s important to feed off that positive energy supplied by the running community.
Acceptance is the moment of enlightenment for the injured runner
We all try to ignore that niggle, try to put the pain to the back of our minds as we want to continue doing the thing we love. However, like a bad relationship if something isn’t working right it can be more damaging. The general pattern of response to injury in my experience goes something like this:
- Denial – When we try to continue our sports regardless and hope it will just get better
- Understanding – We understand that something is wrong and finally relent to go see a physio. By this point we may not necessarily be accepting of the outcome when we’re told to take time off
- Acceptance – We finally accept the diagnosis or that we need to change our situation
- Adjust – We adjust our training to accommodate the physio’s suggestions
The point of acceptance is the pivotal moment. It is when we give up our pretences and ignorance. Only once we have accepted our situation can we grow and start our road to recovery.
Only once we have lost everything are we free to do anything
Tyler Durden
I feel that the coaches job is to try and push the athlete through that denial stage as quick as possible. It’s not being forceful and telling the athlete that they should stop, but asking some prudent questions causing the athlete to think about it themselves. Is it swelling? Have you tried looking it up? Does it get worse when you run? Have you thought about seeing a physio? The quicker we move through to the acceptance stage, the quicker we will be able to get the athlete back to running.
Discipline – Doing what needs to be done regardless of how you feel
Once we get to acceptance its time to be disciplined. If you really, really love running, then you will do what it takes to make sure you will be able to continue. Why would you want to throw it all away? Yes, you will probably still be unhappy about it but we need to stay focused on the end game.
Take those whiney emotions out of it, get that game face on and do what need to be done.
Someone once commented on my Strava to say “Excuses make today easier but tomorrow harder, discipline makes today harder but tomorrow easier” and I couldn’t agree more…
