G’day
I thought I might interrupt the increasingly turgid and dry Thpinal Series with a bit of obnoxious philosophising.
So get your notebooks out, Professor Franco is convening class.
Rehab is the fight
With the rupturing of ligaments comes the unrooting of the athlete from the life he once knew.
Now, instead of dreaming of ascending the Grappling Industries podium, the athlete can only throw his protein shaker at a wall at the mere thought of it.
With that comes a torrid descent into the 6th of the eight stages of grief - a depressive pit punctuated by temper tantrums triggered by enemy victories at the fabled GI.
Thus, the athlete prematurely returns to the training room in pursuit of eternal glory, only to find himself more injured and depressed than he was previously.
In doing so, our athlete ignores the eternal glory to be conquered in his midst.
The truth is, for as long as you are injured, the injury is the competition. Not Everest base camp, Everest itself.
Programmed like you would your “normal” training, confronted like you would an opponent, targeted like you would a competition.
This was a mindset I stole from Jim Afremow’s book, The Champion’s Mind.
Afremow, a sport’s psychologist, encourages the athlete to be the master of the injury rather than letting the injury master the athlete.
To cue this mindset, Afremow says: “make rehab your new sport until you get your game back, and you will get your game back.”
Rehab is performance
As the Messiah of this Substack puts it -
“Training for rehabilitation objectives forms a continuum with training for performance.”
— Stuart McGill
Indeed the skills, attributes and knowledge honed during rehab isn’t just for the hollow hours on the sidelines.
Instead, rehab forms the building blocs that will enable you to return a better and more well-rounded athlete.
Take my back for example… It would get pissed off ever 2 months, not because I was a reckless spazz on the mats (ok maybe a bit of that); but because my upper back lacked mobility, my core and trunk lacked stability and my hips were tighter than a finance bro before pay day.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know about some of these deficiencies before the injury, but the injury highlighted the deficiencies, forced me to research them and most importantly, address them.
At present as I gain more confidence in my body, the lines between sport, rehab and strength and conditioning are becoming increasingly blurred. Rehab bleeds into S&C and S&C bleeds into the training room.
Also, as my wrestling coach puts it - “they (the injuries) never leave you” - so your rehab is vital knowledge to keep in your pantry for when the problem area inevitably gets tweaky.
You are not what you were and what you will become
“My back is fucked” - became my daily mantra in the first 4 months of my back rehab. An affirmation that things were shit and may well continue to be.
It was nonsense though.
Irrespective of being an entirely arbitrary measure of the state of my back, my daily mantra failed to acknowledge just how much worse my back had been and how much better it had become.
I had resolved my sciatica, I could tie my laces, hop into daddy’s Ferrari, dance Argentine tango with my non-existent Mrs and even pull-counter my line manager’s jab.
The MBIF mantra also completely ignored my ability to affect the situation.
A bit like saying you’re shit at painting or my writing’s shite - it’s a fixed denigration of your abilities. No, you’re not “shit” at either, maybe you lack a bit of talent but more likely, you lack practice.
This was a mindset I had evangelised about as a teenager having read Carole Dweck’s book, Mindset. I knew that a fixed mindset was detrimental and I knew that a growth mindset was the way forward.
However, when you’re swimming in the melancholic soup of injury, it becomes harder to see the forest past the trees.
For those who don’t know, a fixed mindset confines your capabilities to static traits - you either have them or you don’t, you’re either smart or dumb, fit or maimed, robust in the face of injury or injury prone.
A growth mindset, on the other hand, is one that emphasises the individual’s ability to affect their capabilities through focused application over time. You’re not injury prone, you just didn’t address athletic sticking points with respect to your sport. Further, you are more than capable of addressing those sticking points through a well-structured rehab / strength and conditioning programme.
Naturally, a growth mindset leads to far better outcomes than a fixed one…
So i guess instead of saying MBIF, I should’ve said:
“My back, like most things - is a work in progress.”