Sports Sports: The Love of Your Life, or Abusive Relationship? ‘When to throw in the towel on injuries Sheah Gaston — The Brunswickan (University of New Brunswick) FREDERICTON (CUP) -- Have you ever thought about how certifiably insane athletes are? If you go to many sporting events, you’ve likely heard something along the lines of “My buddy Carl there, number 36? Yeah he’s playing with a broken wrist because he just loves the game too much to quit. It’s incredible.” Have you ever looked at that objectively? Carl’s wrist is broken. Broken bones don’t really take that much time to heal, at which time he can start playing again. If Carl keeps it up however, his wrist will never heal and eventually he’ll have to stop playing. After a year hampered by injuries, I finally know the truth: the “hero” stigma surrounding injury is a bigger plague in the athletic world than doping, cheating, and brawling combined. Painful moments in every sporting activity make each player a ticking time bomb—we’re all just buying time until our first (and possibly our last) big injury. Until then, we’ll play with sprains, muscle pulls, fractures, full breaks ... you name it. Injuries then, are a recognized part of every sport. Some players just seem to recover better from their injuries than others, and stay apparently injury-free. What makes the difference between the long-term players and the one-shot wonders? The key is their response to the warning signs. Too many of us believe we’ ve just got bumps, bruises, and scratches—that if pain is weakness leaving the body, then every injury makes us stronger. There’s one problem with this concept: it’s a massive fallacy. Every injury deserves rest and attention, from that ankle you rolled to the finger you broke, to the spleen you ruptured playing full contact mud football last week. Minor injuries can be dealt with efficiently enough by using what’s known as the RICE method: Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. Fairly self- explanatory. What’s more, athletes need not be out an entire season with an injury, says St. Thomas University’s resident physiotherapist, Stephanie Bone. “Athletes actually recover quite well physiologically,” she says, “because they are motivated to heal and were very healthy prior to the injury.” However, the problem for most “motivated” athletes is that they set their sights on playing again as soon as possible, so they do a shoddy job Pg 18 applying the RICE method to the affected joint or muscle. Most athletes leave out the very important R in the process; they ice, compress, and elevate, but they do it for ten minutes while they’re watching TV after practice. Then they figure they’ve healed. Psychological studies of injured players have shown aftermath mirroring the “grief reaction” to the loss of a loved one. The athlete goes through five phases, the first of which is denial. When faced with a small injury like a sprained ankle, an athlete will likely deny the injury, blowing off the R factor of the RICE treatment, because after all, it’s “just a sprained ankle.” And then two weeks down the road, that same athlete might be facing a worse injury, like a blown ligament. Once a severe injury is incurred and recognized, the athlete may finally manage to move beyond denial. For me, this happened when my roommates had to begin helping me get dressed in the morning, because I just couldn’t force my shoulders into simple tasks anymore. It is at this point that most athletes seek help from a trainer, doctor, or physiotherapist, and the long recovery process can begin. The next few phases happen predictably enough, with the athlete experiencing anger, bargaining for recovery (“OK, I won’t go back to practice for a whole week if this can just get better”), depression once they acknowledge they may not play for a long time, and eventual acceptance and reorganization. Players will face the urge to run back out on the field at every stage of recovery, especially once they’ ve made it far enough in their recovery to reach what personal trainer Raphael Brandon notes is “the point when clear communication between physiotherapist, coach and athlete is Vital.” Once the pain is gone, you will feel the immediate urge to play again. But as Brandon points out, “one of the major reasons why athletes suffer a recurrence of an injury is that they have started training too hard, too soon. What they fail to understand is that, just because the injured part is pain free, it doesn’t mean they are fully fit.” What you need at this phase is to overcome the feelings of guilt and sadness over not being able to play, and focus on becoming functional; and not just functional, but fit to play again. “Before returning to play you want to ensure pain-free movement and try some sport specific drills in order to reproduce the forces that would have created the injury in the first place,” says Bone. Once you can pass these drills with no pain at all, you are probably safe to play again. If not, you will likely re-injure. So there’s a very basic message here. Pain equals bad. It does not equal good, strong, committed, or impressive. It’s your body’s way of telling you to stop whatever you’re doing. If your ankle hurts every time you go for a lay-up, you might just have to stop going for lay-ups for a bit. It’s hard to accept, but this is the bottom line: if you’re interested in playing your sport for life, or even for a couple more years, you should never be playing through pain. We convince ourselves that our team needs us, but what I learnt very quickly when I broke my finger, pulled both quads, and dislocated both shoulders a few times in a single season of rugby, I’m going to impart to you now. You just aren’t that important. The team will get by without you, because it has to. If they can’t live without you for two weeks, or maybe a month, they’II be getting by without you forever. And if you convince yourself you’re going back for love of the game, you can kick yourself in the ass right now and save me the time. If you loved the sport that much, you’d be investing in recovery so you could play it for the rest of your life instead of for the next few games, with which you will most likely injure yourself for good.