Psychology techniques for sports injuries

Athletes' progress can be slowed down by poor stress management.

Injuries are an experience that, sooner or later, all athletes go through.

However, these physical conditions can sometimes become a big problem if they occur repeatedly or if they affect other aspects of our game. That is why we often seek psychological advice is often sought when overcoming injuries.But how can our mental resources intervene in our physical integrity?

The impact of injuries on the athlete's mind.

On the one hand, there are aspects of our personality that can suppose certain predisposition to suffer sports injuries, that is to say, there are individual differences between each athlete that make them "more or less psychologically vulnerable to injury".

For example, a person with a responsible coping style (one who focuses on the aspects of their life that are within their control, such as their skill or training) will tend to be less likely to be injured than a person with a victimizing coping style (i.e. one who tends to focus on external elements such as the state of the turf, the toughness of the opponent, etc.).

The importance of stress

On the other hand, the psychological phenomenon that has been most closely linked to the likelihood of injury in an athlete is stress.

Stress is an adaptive response designed to overcome moments of maximum environmental demand. It is a psychological resource that finds its usefulness in providing us with an excess of energy that was used to flee or face a threat, and given its great utility it has been transmitted to us generation after generation. However, sometimes our organism gives this response to non-life-threatening situations, such as an exam, a job interview or an important match.

Thus, stress has certain useful consequences against rival tribes or saber-toothed tigers, but not so adaptive in a soccer match.

On the one hand, our attentional processes become narrowerwhich allows us to focus absolutely on the threatening, priority stimulus, but prevents us from generating the broad attention that most sports require.

On the other hand, our Muscle tone may be affectedThis leaves our physique in less than optimal conditions to carry out the corresponding action and, therefore, more vulnerable to suffering an injury. Thus, proper stress management is a priority in sport if we want to prevent injuries.

Psychological management of the effects of injury

Any sport involves the component of competition and, therefore, all sports involve pressure (even more so if we are talking about high-performance sport). Thus, the secret is not in reducing the pressure or fighting it, but in learning how to manage it.

Among the techniques aimed at stress management, we could highlight two:

1. Cognitive restructuring

Aimed at transforming irrational beliefs into others that are more adaptive to the context.. For example, the belief "we are a bad team" can be an added stress, being logically refutable ("we have had bad results, but we are working to improve"). Beliefs establish our world and determine our behaviors, so it is a basic pillar to work on in sport psychology and injury prevention.

Relaxation techniques

Once we detect the optimal level of activation of our athlete, that is to say, the level of physiological activation at which he/she tends to perform best, we should train him/her in relaxation techniques aimed at reducing this activation when it exceeds this level. Controlled breathing, muscle relaxation and other similar resources can be a good choice when it comes to combating this physiological anxiety.

Rehabilitation

With regard to the rehabilitation periodThe most important psychological variables are at the emotional level.

Motivation is a key factor in relation to adherence to treatment, and in order to maintain its highest levels, the establishment of short-term objectives is usually used, the fulfillment of which is expected to generate a perception of self-efficacy in the athlete that in turn promotes motivation for the exercises to be performed, both physically and psychologically. On the other hand, emotional intelligence training can also be a good solution.

On the other hand, all these techniques can be extrapolated to many other contexts of the sporting and personal life of each player, so that this fact can be used to approach the period of inactivity as one more learning as another learning experience, and since we will all get injured sooner or later, we can turn this obstacle into an opportunity if we manage it properly.