Are We Giving Athletes What THEY Want?
Andy Barker PT
Just the other week it was Mental Health Awareness Week here in the UK. It got me thinking about mental health and in particular the influence such issues have on today's athletes and patients. This article refers to this and emphasises how a global approach to athlete health and well-being is key to any management plan.
The Athletes Mind…
Working with athletes brings its challenges least of all when a player is out injured for a considerable amount of time. Many thoughts and emotions may run through an athlete's head;
‘Will I get back playing?'
‘Will I have the same speed, footwork, strength and fitness that I had pre-injury?'
‘Is this something that is going to continue to plague me during the rest of my career?
Obviously, each injury is different and the severity and length of management will have a large impact on possible thoughts that an athlete might contend with. A player out for 4-6 weeks is less likely to have the above thoughts compared with a player out for 9-12 months for obvious reasons.
Either way, it is important that we first acknowledge that players have and do have anxieties following injury and secondly, that we put interventions in place to ensure these issues don't impede the physical side of recovery from injury. The more and more athletes I treat the more and more I try delving into the psychological aspect of an injured athlete. I don't think our training generally prepares us that well for the ‘psychological' aspect of injury rehabilitation, but it is a massive part of any athlete's recovery.
Finding Out The WHAT……
First up we need to find out the WHAT. The big thing for me is finding out what players are worried about. This largely comes from being able to communicate well with your athletes and have a good understanding and rapport so that they are willing to divulge what anxieties and apprehensions they may have.
If you can get to the bottom of what concerns athletes then you can put interventions in place. Without such information, we are just guessing......
We can write the best management and rehabilitation plan in the world but if any psychology issues are left by the wayside then we might not get the results we want. Previously such issues were largely a ‘taboo' subject particularly within elite sports settings. I primarily work with rugby players and in the main they are thought of as rough, tough, robust athletes and personalities. But this is not always the case. At the top level of sport, they face a great amount of pressure to perform. When they injure and that right to play is taken away from them, some athletes struggle. They often feel they lack ‘purpose,' and why wouldn't they – whilst injured they can no longer do what they do and often feel they are letting themselves and others down.
What has been great recently is the great increase in the exposure mental health has been getting, both in sport and wider society. Current and past athletes speaking out about their own struggles with mental health will hopefully see mental health no longer a taboo subject. One of the athletes I take care of used his own personal battle with depression, which ran alongside him being injured and unable to play, to launch an online magazine, aiming to lift the lid on mental health and in turn help fellow athletes and wider society. He speaks very openly about his own battles and has also interviewed several other athletes in relation to mental health issues. If you're interested in reading further, check it out here http://mantalitymagazine.com/
This is not the case for all………
Making assumptions that all long term injured athletes will have mental health issues is firstly not true and secondly, such assumptions will likely lead to generic interventions that are unlikely to find and manage the true stressor(s) for each individual athlete.
How individuals deal with injuries and ‘stress' will differ greatly. Stress at one time point might not just relate to their physical being at that time but can also be related to psychological well-being. Psychological well-being could be affected by their home life, relationships, contract negotiations or indeed any other aspect of their lives. Therefore, putting interventions in place is key – but these cannot be generic.
We need to find out what each individual wants and why they want it.
Matching Athlete Wants
As a practitioner working with these athletes we will often find the athletes needs and wants to align very closely with our intervention goals...... often they are the exact same. Giving the athletes some of what THEY want, will help ensure buy in to our interventions.
If your goals and your athlete's goals differ, it is often just a case of educating as to why you want to achieve those goals and how they relate to getting your athlete to the end goal. Both athletes and practitioners alike want to build fit, skill-full and robust athletes.
As an example, as a sports professional we might talk about robustness in terms of training or match availability where as an athlete might talk in terms of being fit come the business end of the season and being ready for the ‘big games'. In effect, the above are each of the same, but unless we connect the dots and establish the link between the two in the eyes of our athletes then our interventions may fail.
I'm forever the optimist and like to view every injury as an OPPORTUNITY. The bigger the injury largely the bigger that opportunity will be. That's the way I try to sell it to the athletes I work with. You probably don't have that conversation day one, but once the dust has settled and that athlete has got their head around their diagnosis and prognosis then we can have that chat.
I like to speak to the athlete directly and ask them for individual goals in the following categories;
#1 Physical Goals
#2 Psychological Goals
#3 Non-Athletic Goals
With any injury, there are always other physical goals we can tailor into our management plan. Issues we might have picked up on our movement screening can be addressed or other developments the athletes and/or the strength and conditioning team want to pursue can be prioritised. This gives focus and giving the athlete some control will aid ‘buy in.'
Athletes might sometimes be reluctant to list psychological goals but this is far and away becoming a thing of the past. Some athletes just need a nudge and need to be asked the question, and given trust and good rapport with us they will express any issues they have.
Setting non-athletic goals often helps the overall management plan. It gives athletes an external focus and can ensure they feel they are making progress, even if that might be in another part of their lives. Within the last year some of the athletes I have worked with have engaged with University study, music lessons, started blogging and much more. All these athletes might not have proceeded in this way if we hadn't sat down and discussed such goal setting. ALL these athletes have also reported that these non-athletic goals were highly advantageous in helping them come back from long tern injury.
Summary
To summarise, firstly we need to identify individual athlete's issues, making sure to account for both physical and psychological factors. Secondly, we need to put interventions in place that reflects that individual's issues and to maximise buy in, ensuring our interventions align closely with the needs and wants of our athletes.
Thanks for reading
BIO
He graduated in Physiotherapy from the University of Bradford with a first class honours degree which followed on from a previous Bachelor of Science degree from Leeds Metropolitan University in Sports Performance Coaching.
Andy currently works privately in addition to his sporting work and has also previous experience within National League basketball and professional golf.
Andy has a keen interest in injury prevention and the biomechanics of movement in which he is continuing his studies with the start of a MSc degree later this year in Sports and Exercise Biomechanics.
Andy is also the creator and author of rehabroom.co.uk. RehabRoom is a free online rehab resource site aimed at but not exclusive to physiotherapists, strength and conditioning coaches and personal trainers. To visit the site please click the link; www.rehabroom.co.uk