Injuries: more than a feeling

Injury is an ever-present aspect of competing in any sport, from tee-ball in the third grade, to professional level competition. We all know what can happen to an athlete when something goes wrong: a torn ligament, a broken arm, a concussion. We don’t have to go into all that. An injury is more than that, it is more than simply a debilitating accident that keeps you from competing for the week, month, or season. I know because I’ve been there. To keep it brief, I broke my foot during the first 100 meters of my last race in track last year, making the final 300 very uncomfortable to say the least. I’ve have been around people who have been injured, and know that being injured is far more difficult to deal with than most people can imagine.

To better examine the effects an injury has on an athlete, I sat down with a person who has an extensive knowledge of injury. At the beginning of his junior year, Kevin Shea, now a senior, suffered a knee injury that kept him out of both cross country and track. After trying and failing to make comebacks several times, he became increasingly frustrated that he wasn’t able to run with his team. “It’s like you don’t have anything to identify with,” said Shea. “When you base your whole ego around one thing, and it’s taken away from you, it feels like you have nothing. It’s hard to deal with.” Besides the difficulty of working through an injury, a very real problem that many athletes experience is the feeling that they are letting their team down, even if all the team wants is for them to get better. Today, though he is still dealing with knee pains, Kevin has returned to his former glory as the fastest runner on the team.

For many people, their injuries never truly disappear. This is true for junior Jane Park, a swimmer and tennis player, who’s still hampered by an injury that occurred in her freshmen year. “It’s not consistent,” she said, “but when it hurts, I can’t walk or use my arms, but that’s only when it’s really bad. Most of the times when the pain comes it’s not too bad, and is just harder to walk.” Though her injury is not overly serious, it has continually affected her ability to practice with the team.

Despite this, she hasn’t let it get her down. “Sometimes its harder during tennis season cause I’m on land, and it puts more pressure on my knee than when I’m in water… but it doesn’t affect my passion towards swimming or tennis at all.” Though her injury has continued to resurface, Park remains diligent in her practices.

It is true that many of the problems an athlete experiences upon returning to regular practice are a direct result of not being able to work out for an extended period of time. When I first started to workout again, I was stunned by how difficult even an easy workout was. I wasn’t even doing the full workouts! But besides that, because all my muscles had been horribly weakened by the extended leave of absence, I began to develop two problems that are very common in newbie runners: knee pains and shin splints. If anyone doesn’t know what shin splints are, imagine a steak knife peeling the muscles from your leg bone, and you have a fairly accurate idea.

But coming back to a sport is far from simply a matter of overcoming the physical deficiencies. It is every bit as much a mental process. Not only are you returning to a sport in which you got hurt, experienced very real pain, but when you return, it’s like you’re starting over completely. It is very difficult to get back into the routine of practice and competition. It is very difficult to accept how much pain and work must go into getting back to where you were before the injury. And it is very difficult to feel like your team hasn’t accepted you back into the fold. Until an athlete feels that they are a part of their team, they can never fully recover from any injury, no matter how grave. For many athletes, such as Shea, this can be worse than the injury itself.

One Response

1. 9:00 AM on November 20th, 2006danlover:

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