The Mental Side of Coming Back from Injury
by Steve McGill

Getting injured is the worst. I’ve always said that getting injured is even worse than losing. When you lose, at least you can say you raced, and you can identify ways to improve and run faster. But when you don’t get to run at all because your body won’t let you, that can get inside your head just as much, if not even more. Especially if the injury is significant enough that you are forced to miss a large chunk of time. Being away from your time, being away from your routine, being forced to watch the healthy runners run, can create a lot of self-doubt and feelings of inferiority, as the one thing that made you feel special and that was particularly enjoyable has been taken from you. In this article I will discuss this topic from the perspective of a coach, as it has become particularly relevant for me this year. 

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I have a theory that the inconsistent (or nonexistent) training caused by the quarantines and shutdowns when the pandemic swept through the world last spring and into this year has led to a higher than usual number of injuries in sports across the board. I’m a big fan of NBA basketball, and it has been evident to me that there have been an inordinate number of injuries this year, and most of them have been of the variety that are caused by inconsistent training followed by very hard training that the body isn’t yet ready for — hamstring strains, groin strains, calf strains. James Harden of the Brooklyn Nets, for example, came into the season out of shape (when he was still a member of the Houston Rockets), then had some hamstring issues when he first arrived with the Nets, and is currently missing playoff games with those same hamstring issues that won’t go away. Similarly, in track and field, the 2021 season has, in many cases, featured inconsistent training after significant time away. The end of quarantines and shutdowns in most areas has salvaged seasons, but the rush to return to old form on the part of athletes and the rush to make up for a lot of lost quality practice time on the part of coaches has led to injuries indicative of a lack of usual muscle strength that is gained through base training.

The athlete that I work with regularly in my private coaching, Brandon Johnson, suffered a severe ankle sprain in April that threatened to end his season, and he is just now rounding back into shape. He’s a high school senior, and he does have a few school meets left this summer, as our state has pushed back its state championships to the end of June. While I’m confident that he will run well and that he should be able to pull off a victory at the state meet, there is no doubt that no matter how fast he runs, he won’t run as fast as he could have had he not gotten injured. He missed about five weeks of training due to the injury, and when he came back, he wasn’t the same person. 

Physically, he wasn’t able to pick up where he had left off. Though he had been doing rehabilitation exercises regularly, and even though he looked very good in his hurdle drills, things changed when we put the starting blocks down and practiced the start to the first hurdle. He’s a seven stepper, and pre-injury, he was getting crowded to the first hurdle even seven-stepping. Now, when I put down the mini-cones for the 6-foot take-off distance and the 7-foot take-off distance, he was a foot behind the 7-foot cone (we hadn’t put a hurdle up yet). And his first stride, which had been super-explosive, was looking rather anemic. I was like, “Where’s the push? You’re not pushing.” And he was like, “I’m trying.” As the session progressed, he progressed. He was hitting his take-off mark to the first hurdle, but he was standing up coming off the hurdle, which is something he had not been doing at all pre-injury. When I put up a second hurdle, he was able to get over it, but it was obvious that the speed between that I had grown accustomed to was not there. He was working, really trying, between the hurdles. 

We talked about it throughout the workout and after the workout, and we both agreed that it would take some time to get his explosive power back. In addition, there were issues with his hurdle-endurance, so I had to sprinkle in some fall-type drills in subsequent workouts, but we’d always start each session with block work, because I didn’t want him getting so fatigued with the hurdle-endurance stuff that it took away all his juice for the speed component of the workout. 

Though we didn’t have any long, deep conversations about the mental side of things, it was evident to me that the injury had traumatized him to a degree. Some of the lack of explosiveness was due to fear — of putting too much pressure on the take-off foot and injuring again. He had to rebuild a trust in it again, because once you’ve been injured once, you’re always going to be afraid that it’s going to happen again. In his races since his return, he has been high over hurdles and he has had difficulty maintaining his speed for the whole flight of ten. 

We had a major breakthrough this past weekend. Junior Malik Mixon, who, along with Brandon, has been featured in many videos on my YouTube channel the past year or so, came up from Georgia for the weekend, and on Saturday morning I had Brandon and Malik do a series of competitive starts over the first three hurdles. I wasn’t sure how things would go. I wasn’t sure if Brandon was ready to leap to this level of competition, even in a practice session. Back in November, we had done the same workout, and Brandon had beaten Malik out of the blocks every rep. Not that we were racing, but still, when someone is beside you, you want to win; that’s just the competitive nature of the athlete. So I did fear that if Malik were to blast Brandon out of the blocks now, that might set Brandon back in terms of confidence and end up having the opposite effect that I intended. Keep in mind, Malik ran 13.78 at his regional meet in Georgia last month, so the Malik of this past weekend was a much better hurdler than the Malik we had seen in November. 

But my strategy didn’t backfire. Not at all. Brandon had his best practice of the year, really, pre-injury and post-injury. Though Malik did win a rep or two, Brandon won the majority of them, and all of his explosiveness was back, and he was nice and low over the hurdles, and he maintained a quick cadence in between. The video below is of a workout Brandon did the previous week, when he worked on his block start alone. This workout helped to prepare him and build confidence for this past weekend’s workout with Malik.

Meanwhile, Malik was recovering from injury issues of his own. His 13.78 at his regional meet was followed up a week later with a 14.40 at his state meet. He told me that he had felt a twinge in his hamstring early in the race, so he ran fast enough from there to win. Throughout the season, he had been running both hurdle events in addition to relays, and all the events and all the rounds were taking a toll. So, Brandon helped Malik as much as Malik helped Brandon. They both left that session feeling confident that they had taken a huge leap forward.

Another hamstring victim — this one being a full-on tear — was Alex Nunley, a senior who will be running for North Carolina State University next year. I’ve known Alex since he was three, as I coached both of his older brothers back in the day, one of whom was ranked number one in the nation in the 110’s his senior year. But when I moved away six years ago, that meant I couldn’t be there for Alex on a regular basis. Now that we’re three hours apart, his parents would usually bring him by about once a month. But covid killed that, and then a hamstring tear in January did further damage to any hope of a return to old norms. But he’s back healthy now, and he came by for a session this past Sunday. He needed some one-on-one time, so I didn’t throw him into the fire of competitive starts with Brandon and Malik, although I’m sure he would’ve held his own. As it turns out, we got in some good drilling, some excellent block starts over the first two hurdles, and we identified the source of a technical flaw and how to correct it. 

In the case of all three athletes, the mental and the physical recoveries were intertwined. What I have learned is that by focusing on the physical recovery, I can indirectly focus on the mental recovery. There’s nothing more impactful in instilling confidence and a sense of belief in oneself than a good rep. And as those good reps add up, the fear slowly dissipates, and trust is gradually restored. The athlete who wondered if he could ever get back to his old self becomes convinced that he can, and that he will. Even after a bad rep, I can’t panic or get upset or get frustrated. I have to stay even-tempered and be ready to make on-the-spot decisions. Maybe lower the hurdles a click. Maybe abandon what we’re doing and switch to a different drill. Maybe keep things the same and remind the athlete that it takes time to come back from an injury, but we’re gonna get there. Sometimes between reps I’ll ask, “How’s the ankle feeling? You good?” Something like that. A simple question like that lets the athlete know that I’m aware of what he’s going through, and it also helps to avoid overworking the athlete. 

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