Injury Recovery: Don't Rush The Process - Episode 39 w/ Coach Bryn

So the key is when you're playing a sport, um, of course injuries can happen. And let's talk about prior to the injury. What is your state of mind? What kind of week are you having? Are you bringing a lot of that onto the court or onto the field or onto the mat or onto the track or onto the ice, etc., because you aren't dealing with it?

I'm excited for you to see this week's episode, but before we get to that, I have a message for you. If you're a parent of an elite athlete or a coach of a high-performing team and you want— you're looking for some help or assistance with making them more mentally resilient, perform with more confidence, be more consistent, anything like that, then this is for you. I have an 8-week program all designed to address exactly that, to help your athlete be at their best on a more consistent basis and not get tripped up by those little voices in their head and getting down on themselves for mistakes performing like we know they can. So what I want you to do is don't delay, schedule a— just grab a time on my calendar through this link and let's set up a time to talk about your specific situation and how what I'm offering in my 8-week program can help. Okay, so it's brindresher.com/freeconsultation. So click this link, grab a time on my calendar. I look forward to talking to you. And now on to this week's episode. What's up, beautiful people?

Welcome back to another episode of the Mental Advantage Podcast. It's time for a solo episode with me, Coach Brynn. I hope you've been enjoying all of the episodes we brought to you thus far. Last week we had Rachel, uh, Belkovec, uh, who's a hitting coach for the Yankees. And next week we'll have another special guest coming for you. But this week you're with me., and I want to talk about injuries. Now, for athletes, injuries can be a very interesting time, okay? In the sense that, as an athlete, as someone who is known for their physical performance in a sport, whether it be a team sport, individual sport, so if we're talking basketball, football, hockey, volleyball, soccer, versus tennis, wrestling, track and field. Now, all of those can have a team component to it, but typically you're out there by yourself as opposed to the team sports. But when athletes get injured, they tend to have a rough time. There's a strong piece of evidence about the identity piece, which is I am a insert sport here player, right? I play tennis, I'm a tennis player, that's who I am, right? So if I can't play tennis, it begs the question, who am I? So some athletes really struggle, not just the pain of the injury itself, or but the sort of the grief of the loss of being able to be out there and competing, as they've come to just know. And you've seen this countless times, I know No matter how many athletes you look at, whether they be on the professional stage or even, you know, in the younger years, it, it can really psychologically affect an athlete if they can't perform the way that they used to, you know, even from one game to the next. So injuries that are quite common— torn ACLs has a lot to do with the knees. Achilles, ankles, feet, hands, fingers. So this episode is a little bit inspired by one of my athletes who got injured recently, a situation of a sprained finger or a fractured finger in practice. This is one of my younger athletes, so we are talking about a high school athlete, but regardless of what level you are competing on as an athlete, or as a performer, I want you to know that there are some parallels here that may speak to how you feel. So my athlete got injured and she only had 2 games left in her season. 2 games left. So the question is, do I play or do I not? And this is with a, uh, you know, a brace around the finger, you know, a lot of pain bending it, etc. Now I meet with her once a week and I happen to meet with her the night before one of the last two games. So she was like, yeah, I think I'm going to play tomorrow. And I was like, well, first said I want to play in the last two games. I didn't know when they were. So I asked, was it today? You know, when's the next game? And I'm thinking, if you got a week, you might be able to do something. But it turned out the game was the next day. And as much as I would like to believe, you know, I'm a very good mental coach. Some miracles you cannot perform overnight. And it's more dependent when you're talking about being able to move the needle mentally when it comes to an injury. You may need some more time. Time is really your friend when it comes to injury recovery. So I said, well, unless you have the mental game of a monk— and I'm talking about a Tibetan monk or, you know, some kind of person who's dedicated their life to, uh, you know, being able to do feats with their mind— and I say that because there are monks that can sit out in the freezing cold and still be sweating because they bring their body temperature to a place where they feel hot, or vice versa. So, um, they are the true masters of like that type of using your ment— you know, your psychology to affect your physiology. So I believe that there is a way to heal yourself, um, with injuries. And, uh, the traditional route of recovery, listening to your personal trainer, your doctor, um, you know, is going to be the best route with a layer on top of the mental game. And so we're going to talk about that. Essentially, I, I, I told my athlete, you know, because he's like, but I want to play with my friends, this is my last game of the season, you know. But anytime, like, even a small slight bend, you know, like that first crease, she's like, ah. I'm like, okay, so here's what's gonna happen if you play injured. Most of the time, though you may want to play through the pain because there's lots of evidence of athletes, you know, playing through the pain, and there's a certain amount of pain that athletes sort of learn to tolerate when they're— especially when they're high performance. And there is something to be said for if I am concerned about the pain that I am experiencing in a particular part of my body, I'm most likely going to be protective of it to the point that I'm probably going to attract an experience where I may reinjure that area of my body. Then what happens? Well, you can do irreparable harm to your limb, right? So in the case of my athlete's finger, it was currently fractured. She could break it, um, you know, in a way that it could heal interestingly or something like that. And my message to her and my message to you, the listening audience, is to really think about a time that you've gone through something difficult an injury of sorts, whether it be emotional or physical, and you've been really hard on yourself because, you know, what was I— you know, like, I want to be able to go out and play like I did yesterday, or, you know, or there's a big thing coming up and I need to be healthy for it. And those are all understandable feelings, and I think it's just important that you give yourself grace. And what I said to my athlete was, you are more than your sport. So while I completely understand you wanting to play basketball and not missing out on your last two games of the season, you do still have a senior year left. And I think— and who knows, you could heal, and then if, you know, you guys do well in these last two games, your team— you're a great teammate— you have the opportunity to come back and play in a later game in the playoffs. So it's really sort of giving that perspective of What happens if I get injured? How long is going to be my road of recovery? And how do I balance, you know, how much pain can I tolerate? It's not so much about being a tough guy or a tough girl here, or a tough person. It's more about recognizing that if you feel this desire and you're just, I want to compete, that is admirable. And I always say that the body cries the tears we won't let our eyes cry. So if I'm not allowing certain emotions to escape, I'm most likely going to attract a situation where I may injure something. And I want to recommend to the listening audience this amazing book by Louise Hay. It's called Heal Your Body. Heal Your Body. I don't think I talked about this before., but essentially in this book it has like all of these different things with the body part on one side and then the, the what it means. And this, so in this case, uh, my athlete, it was their middle finger. And you know, I looked up the middle finger and I'm not going to share right now what it is even though you don't know who the athlete is, um, but it, it represented an emotion. And typically when I read this to my athletes when they do get injured they say, oh wow, that's really true, I have been feeling that way.

So the key is, when you're playing a sport, um, of course injuries can happen.

And let's talk about prior to the injury— what is your state of mind? What kind of week are you having? Are you bringing a lot of that onto the court or onto the field or onto the mat or onto the track or onto the ice, etc.? Because you aren't dealing with it. So what happens is, is that even though we have these feelings, it's sort of like that warning light in your car. You're not really paying attention to it. You're like, okay, it's a check engine light, I can ride with it, everything's fine, the car seems to be functioning okay, until the car craps out on you and you get stuck somewhere on the side of the road with no service, or, you know, like no services nearby, as well as your cell phone might not have service. So things like that. So I think it's really important to look at what is your state of mind. So when we talk about the mental game when it comes to injuries, you're having— you're a human being, you're a full-fledged human being before you were ever an athlete, and you've got emotions. And our emotions are like those, uh, little like, uh, rumble strips on the side of the road that kind of keep you from— like, if you start to drift when you get sleepy, and it's like, whoa, wake up! So when you're having emotions or you're feeling things, the important thing is not to stuff them down.

So this makes us— when we talk about stuffing down our emotions, we start to think about Simone Biles and the situation where she called it the twisties. So for all we know, for some amount of time she was sort of soldiering through as she's competing at the highest level of gymnastics, and then she gets to a point where it becomes perilous or dangerous for her to compete and it is inadvisable for her to continue to put herself in that type of situation. Well, similarly for all of us, when we're competing at a high level, not only do we have all of our passion and adrenaline, but then there's some athletes that have anxiety and different things. And so typically, the less calm you are feeling— and I don't mean that you're sitting there in some sort of Zen lotus position, and meditating in the middle of your competition. But the more heightened emotions you're having, the less present you are in the moment to be able to employ the fullness of all of your capacities, which can then really result in an injury. So you want to be mindful about what is your mental state going into a practice, a game, competition, whatever it is, because those are the times that we make ourselves most susceptible to injury. Now I want to get back to the story with my athlete. She did end up ultimately not playing after, um, because I knew I had no power over whether she was going to play or not, because ultimately it always comes down to the athlete's choice. I'm going to advise what I think is best, I'm going to talk through it with you, but ultimately the athlete has to make the decision. So I was really proud of her for not playing when she could have easily just made the decision, um, to play because she put the sports and the event over herself. And I think it's important that we prioritize ourselves and our healing over a game. Um, I, I of course don't want to— of course don't want to minimize how any athlete feels about the importance of one competition to the next, or just the opportunity to play in the sport, event, action that they just crave. And the key is, by foregoing this game or the next game, you may live to fight again another day, right? And so I think it's important to recognize that your health should come first. So it's not this idea of, you know, like the sport comes first and then here I am. No, it's I am the person that is most important here? How am I feeling? And I think that that goes back to the Simone Biles situation, prioritizing her mental health over competing for the American people, the team, and all the things that— all that noise that was surrounding her. So I think it's really important that we understand that injuries can definitely happen when we are in a heightened emotion. We're kind of nervous, we're experiencing a lot of things on and off the court. Or the ice or the game or whatever, and we need to get into a place where we're kind of bringing ourselves back to the present moment. Okay, so that's how to avoid an injury. But once you have an injury, the most important thing that you need to understand is that you give yourself time. You give yourself time. So if you're going through something tough, you can't quite compete, there's other ways to be in your sport without having to be the competitor.. So for example, you watch any professional sport, when an athlete's out on injury, they still come to the games, they're still on the sidelines, you know, supporting their teammates as well as even advising them. You see situations where the guys are in their suits and they're talking to one of their teammates who just came off the court, off the mat. So there's other ways and capacities in which you can employ your gifts that don't only have to do with performance.. And I even had an athlete that said that by being injured, it gave her a very unique perspective of being able to see the game from a different perspective. Being on the bench, all of a sudden everything that her, their coach or her coach was telling her made sense from a different perspective because now it was like, oh, I see the game looks different from here versus when I'm living it in the moment. Okay, so it's really important to also take advantage of this new vantage point and be able to to see what it's like to observe your teammates as your coaches and your teammates are observing you when you're out there competing and putting yourself on the line. And it just gives you a new healthy appreciation, right? The other thing is giving yourself proper time, because sometimes I had an athlete that got injured because she was going through a lot, and almost like it gave her a chance to like slow down, to relax. So I think it's really important to take time for injury recovery. Give yourself grace, give yourself grace, and take the time. Other things you can do when you're out on injury is mental visualization, right?

Mental rehearsal.

So I had an athlete on my podcast that talked about, you know, actually doing moves while recovering. So very important that you take advantage of your downtime to be able to get back onto the mat, get back onto the the ice, get back onto the court, whatever it is. And know that while you can't physically compete, you can always mentally have an entire game, an entire session with yourself. So I wanted to give you that perspective, is that there's other advantages. Obviously, no one wants to get injured. I'm not wishing injury on anyone. And if you're not an athlete and you're listening to this, I'm talking about difficult things that have happened in your life, difficult moments that you're going through, and you're rushing back, right?

You're rushing back. I've got it.

Oh my gosh, this week I got nothing done. I didn't get anything done. I'm not the person I used to be before. Okay, well, the important thing to recognize is sometimes you got to go through that period and you got to give yourself grace, give yourself time. Take the time that's necessary to come back stronger and better than ever. We saw the case of Kevin Durant rushing back from injury and reinjuring and staying out even longer, right? I mean, Klay Thompson just came back after almost 2 years out. So if you want to have longevity of career, of success, You have to go through those down periods sometimes and really take advantage of it. One of the things that happens for a lot of athletes is this fear, this fear that I won't come back better than ever, that I won't, you know, someone's gonna take my spot and all that. And this is what causes athletes to wanna rush back or, oh, I got a friend coming to the game, or, you know, this person's gonna, a scout's coming, I can't be injured. And it's like, listen, if you're good, If you're, you're putting in the work, your opportunities will come and you'll get more than one. It's not a once-in-a-lifetime thing. The most important person and situation that we need to remember is us and our happiness and our health. And I know that's hard to hear when you're like, but I can play. I mean, yeah, I wouldn't be 100%, but I can play. And what if my team— what if I let my team down? What if this happens? What if that happens? And those are all understandable feelings, and I'm still going to encourage you to take your time and recover properly. You will thank yourself in the long run. Your future self will thank your current self for taking the time, because as you go through an injury and you're out for a certain amount of time, you could be back better than ever. So do what's necessary. Add the mental game work while you're— so do the work on yourself and make sure you're allowing yourself to feel the feelings and get the proper mental reps that you need so that you can avoid injury. And when or if injury happens, just understand that this is just a part of the process, okay? There's gonna be some valleys with— that go with all those peaks, and this is how we kind of get used to the peaks, is by having the valley moments. And I'm just going to encourage you to use that time to your advantage to become mentally stronger and really work your body out mentally so that when you come back physically and do everything your PT says— find a good PT, follow their instructions, and also, you know, just listen to your body. Trust yourself. Just don't listen to some voice in your head that says, "If I don't play now, I'll never—" You know, not that. Okay, there's— you gotta give yourself the right amount of time to heal, to go through what you need to go through, so you can be back out there performing at your best and even better than what you thought you could. Um, you know, rather than worry like, am I going to be as good, it's like, I'm gonna come back better, better than ever, right? Regardless of what anyone tells you. Um, there's a great quote that says, what lies before us is never as great or as big as what lies us. So just know that no one gets to tell you what's possible for you but you. And give yourself grace. Do what you got to do. Handle yourself through the injury and know that injuries are not the end of the world. And even if it means you missed the last 2 games of the season, yeah, you're gonna have another season. And if it's not, and it's not, you're never, you know, like, if you're deciding like, this was my last 2 games of I was ever gonna play, then you have a decision to make. And I ask you, just make sure that what's it cost versus what's it worth? Is it worth going out there and possibly injuring yourself worse to be able to play? And only you can answer that. Okay, so thanks for listening, everyone. Take care of yourselves, really take care of yourselves, and, uh, I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Please like, comment, and subscribe.

And let's get our mental games all the way to the top.