Mental Recovery

Recurring injury can be fairly depressing. You take your rest, do your exercises but when you get back into your chosen sport fully, you break down. In some ways, if you have to be injured, it's better to have one that is more clear cut i.e. cruciate or whatever. Of course, you'd rather not have any injury but the procedure to repair a cruciate and the programme of recovery are so well defined that you know exactly what you are getting into and most people make a full recovery with no recurrences.

I injured my back in early 2006 and I'd say I've been conscious of it 75% of the time I've trained or played since. Maybe 25% of the time it impacted my performance and often any further impact was cancelled out by nurofen. The inability to shake the injury would get on top of me from time to time. When I went back training last Thursday, the warning signs were there from the off. Both hamstrings felt they would go at the slightest sprint or twist and towards the end, the lower back started to stiffen.

For the following days, my whole back was sore enough to head for the nurofen box again and my flexibility was seriously reduced. You'd be thinking to yourself that it's hardly worth your while to be even trying to play and you’d be feeling sorry for yourself. Self-pity gets you nowhere though. Instead, it's better to think about the positives. For instance, the injury has been this bad before and I have recovered to the point where I could play again. So that's what I drill into my head. There was a way before so there can be a way again.

It boils down to positive attitude and discipline. I was reading about sports psychology and its link to injury recovery during the week. They say you should educate yourself fully about an injury and that's something I've found very good. The internet is an unlimited resource so finding the desired content is easy. For instance, I could read about my injury but also about people's experiences recovering from it. They'll have gone through the same process, got the same feedback from doctors etc but will have found a way. And it always comes back to attitude and discipline. I think most people underestimate the power of those two traits. The most successful people in any walk of live have them in abundance. It's a winner’s mentality and we must remember that it's a controllable; we can decide our own attitude and application.

Paddy Tiedt is an acupuncture guy that we use in Kinsale. He's immensely positive and a great guy to see when you have an injury for that reason. Of course, the question you'd always ask him is what can I do and how much? He'd stand facing the wall with his palms facing it. He'd tell you to treat the injury like a fire and he'd move his hands towards the wall (or imaginary fire in this case) but when he got too close he'd pull them back saying it was too hot. Sounds like a stupid story but I keep it in my mind now. The message is yes, by all means train, but when you are feeling the injury step back from the fire.

Today, the back has eased out again but I'm not naive enough to think that I'm ready to participate fully in training. So now it's a case of changing the approach. The gym work is grand but it's not helping my fitness for hurling and football so I need to run. But I can't run the way you do at training where you must twist and turn and ship challenges. I'll devise a little programme for myself and train away at the end of the pitch tomorrow night. It’s not ideal but if I can eliminate the things that aggravate it then at least I can make up some of the lost ground.

And I couldn't miss the opportunity to show off my latest fashion item to complement the yellow boots.