Is working with a mental coach or sport psychology consultant while you are injured going to help you at all? The answer is an astounding YES! The research is classifying athlete’s responses to injury into three phases: (1) response to injury, (2) response to rehabilitation, and (3) response to return-to-play (Kamphoff et al., 2013). When broken down, an athlete has different mental and physical challenges for each distinct phase of injury response with the addition of more time to focus on the mental side of performing.
What is nice is the same mental skills that athletes are taught and use for performance enhancement in sport can successfully be applied to rehabilitation. For instance, realistic yet challenging goals, the ability to leverage self-talk to enhance confidence, improve focus, motivate yourself, and control emotions, and especially incorporating a powerful imagery training regimen will not only help in the rehabilitation process, but it will stave off rust from lack of play and create an opportunity to actually grow as a more complete athlete.
More importantly, working with a sport psychology consultant can help with the mental reactions of loss. All athletes combat negative and unproductive thoughts, but some struggle more than others. Redirecting our energy into growing and improving in different ways is more productive and is what a consultant can help guide athletes to accept and act on.
Thus, sport psychology work during injury is actually a great time to start or heavily continue to work with a professional. Hopefully it will be an important step in building the foundation to more complex and consistent mental training and optimal performance. Keep adapting, keep improving, and keep accomplishing in every situation life throws at you.
Let it fly,
TK
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