Basketball is a high intensity sport and therefore our bodies regularly get a beating. In most cases, injuries aren’t too serious and after having a treatment or a medical advice, you can continue to play ball again after a couple of days or weeks.
If your style of play is very physical, chances are great to suffer from a serious injury in your career. These injuries can take you out of the game for weeks, and in serious cases even for months or a life-time. We’ve seen a lot of players, which had to end their careers due to severe injuries. From what I’ve noticed, players have to deal not only with the physical aspects of an injury, but with psychological issues as well. Psychology can be a big issue, when trying to come back from a severe injury!
The Psychological Side
When confronted with a serious injury, players tend to lose their focus and routine from their lives, may it be the life they use to have within the team, but also the social life in private. Basically, you are left on the sidelines on both ends.
Adding to that, the longer your rehabilitation phase is, the longer it will take to get back to a 100% performance on a physical and mental level. What I’ve witnessed so far is, that it takes the same amount of time to get back on track, as with getting back on physical level. For example: if the injury takes out a player for two months, usually he will need at least the same amount of time to get back physically and mentally.
This is caused psychologically, because during the rehab athletes lose self-confidence and have doubts they can ever reach their full potential again. In this stage, it is very important, that the support from teammates and coaching staff is there. Make your player feel, he is part of the family … part of the team.
Another thing which may affect athletic performance is fright of the injury happening again. On a psychological level, these doubts and fears definitely have a negative impact on your player.
I’ve put together three different ways to get you back on track quickly:
What exactly happened to me?
First, there is no need to blame you or anyone else for your injury. Although you may have been injured due to a hard foul of an opponent, blaming him will not help you in your situation. Take control of your situation and decide for yourself to be the one pro-actively working on your return to your atheltic career.
Even if you know which inury you have, try to find out the details. Let your doctor explain to you, what exactly happened on a physiological level. Questions to ask your doctor could be something like:
-How have I been injured and how long will it take roughly to get back on track??
-If there’s a rehab, what are the necessary steps?
-How do I know, when I can start walking, practicing, working-out again?
-What else do I have to be aware of?
Taking your time to understand your injury and how to cope with it on a medical level will let you feel in control of the situation. If you know, what is going on and how long it will take to heal, allows you to accomplish your career planning and goal-setting much easier.
Use Mindtricks
Apart from focusing on your physiotherapy, concentrate on the emotional area as well. Keep a confident frame of mind regarding your entire healing process. As soon as you begin to feel adverse or carry too much negative thoughts, begin to consider all of them and make an effort to exchange them with constructive feelings. Talk to a close friend you trust or a psychologist if you believe it could actually boost your feelings. A good number of approaches as an example building up emotional pictures associated with positive feelings are actually very helpful in personal injury therapy. As a final point, it’s about being alert of your capabilities, adhering to counseling and defining possible aims.
There can be situations when a person suffers a few minor difficulties, however realize that it could come up a lot of times and don’t lose sight of your dreams, although they are needed to be aligned by some means.
In the majority of scenarios, beating a heavy imjury has hardly any physical impact on your earlier physical capability. Additionally, what you’ve experienced will definitely present you with a mental strength that could possibly lead to you accomplishing things a lot better than you did prior to getting harmed.
Goals and Targets
Successful athletes are aware of the significance of goal-setting enroute to recovery, and great athletes find away to motivate themselves for the future.
When returning to practicing, with the desired goals as your objective, don’t haste things and take your time at first. The danger is big to have another injury, because of attempting to accomplish too much in a short time after standing on the court again. Set achievable goals with having your recent injury in mind and plan your practice sessions adequately. Set smaller milestones and accomplish them bit by bit. If you set your goals too high, chances are you’ll miss them and get demotivated.
Build up your confidence by going slow with physical intensity and you’ll be on a good way to continue your athletic career!
How did you cope with an injury you’ve had?
