I've written a lot lately about the patience required to rehabilitate your body when sickness or injury occurs. I've found that athletes are generally goal orientated people and can be impatient, wanting to see improvements quickly, run faster, be stronger - learning the art of patience can be difficult and frustrating at times, leading to stress and a cycle where small gains in health or fitness are made, only to be compensated by bigger losses overall with prolonged recovery periods, ongoing illness or lingering fatigue.
When the time comes to return to training, patience is also needed - together with a good dose of reality. The return to training will be varied - from a mild discomfort to all out ugly, depending on how long you were sidelined resting and recovering. It can be tempting to throw the toys out of the pram and madly try to make up "all the time lost" while you were sick or injured to get back to where you were at as quickly as possible.
I'm not a doctor, or a coach or qualified in any respect to talk about returning to sport from illness or injury. But I have been on this journey a couple of times now and learnt a few lessons the hard way about how these things need to be approached and some of the thoughts that can crowd your mind in the process:
Everyone's been training so much while I've been off sick/injured. They will be so much better then me on race day.
Crap. Based on what? Because they happened to be able to swim, bike and run to their programs (whatever they happen to be) while you were recovering? Were you absolute equals before that? Were you going to be absolute equals after that? Who's to say they haven't had troubles of their own? Worrying about what others have been doing while you have been off is a pointless exercise based on nothing but ego. It doesn't help get you back into form, it doesn't help motivate or encourage you and it will only succeed in building a big lie in your head about how you're not good enough. Move on.
I've lost so much time, I need to catch up and do more sessions/longer sessions/harder sessions now to make up
Once time has passed, it's passed. You can never do enough training to recover 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months or whatever time you have needed off to recover. Thinking that you are some kind of superhero and can train to make up that time is just going to make you sick and injured all over again. I know because I made that mistake stupidly thinking I was invincible. Be sensible
All the training before I got sick/injured is going to be lost. I'm going to be starting at square one again
I listed this because, I admit, I was initially filled with panicked thoughts about this very thing. So, again I am not qualified in any way about what the body does. But I am a lawyer and with that training comes the ability to think things through objectively and with a degree of common sense. Common sense tells me that if you have been training consistently for, say, 12 months but then got sick/injured for a few weeks and couldn't do much (or anything), then it would be some kind of freak biological miracle if your body somehow spontaneously combusted all the good muscle fibres you'd built, the aerobic and endurance capacity of your heart and lungs suddenly shrunk and your legs forgot how to turn pedals.
Let's get real. Sure, there will be a decline around the edges of where you were at (and I was told this, and what do you know, it's true)....but if you were training for an extended period before injury or illness, chances are you've developed one of those "bases" all the qualified people talk about and this will be there when you go to run or ride again. The first few goes might be a bit rough, but you'll polish things up quicker then you think. After 3.5weeks of sickness, I went for a 30min run on Thursday and rode 90min today. I wasn't making magic happened, I felt tired at the end of both (to be expected) but the main thing was that I could see the fitness was still there. There was still strength lying dormant despite the weeks of antibiotics, rest and fatigue. Have faith.
I'm going to be sick/injured FOR-EVER. I hate triathlon
No you won't. And no you don't. You got sick/injured for a reason. While you're (patiently) recovering, take a good hard look at why that might be. Were you doing too much? Training at a high intensity too often? Not getting enough recovery? Racing too often? Ignoring niggles that should have been looked at? At work, I'm often called into meetings to discuss the "root cause" of problems. The same logic should be applied to sickness and injury. If you can determine the root cause, implement a fix and test it, chances are it might not happen again.
I'm back training but still feeling so tired/sore. I'm never going to get over this.
Lies. Yes you will, but it will take some time and this will be different for everyone.
I was doing a bit of reading today and came across this simple piece written for the Australian Sports Commission (http://www.ausport.gov.au/sportscoachmag/program_management2/how_to_manage_the_return_to_training_after_illness). There's nothing groundbreaking here, but it did help remind me that illness and injury happens to everyone. And we all get through it.
The main thing I've learnt is giving your body the time it needs to recover - it will spit in your face if you try and push it too hard too early. Maybe not straight away - but karma always bites when you least expect it and, probably, when you need your body to be on your side the most.
For me, I am adopting the conservative, ease-back-into-it approach. Although the first 2 sessions have left me a bit tired, what they did do was show me that my fitness and training was still there...just buried under the drugs, Lemsip, ginger tea and chocolate that's been eaten over the last few weeks. The next session will never be as bad/ugly/tiring as the last, so it's onwards and upwards from here.
Tell it Sister!
ReplyDeleteAmen