Psychology techniques for sports injuries

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 it is often sought psychological counseling when overcoming injuriesBut, how can our mental resources intervene in our physical integrity?

• Related article: "What is Sports Psychology? Discover the secrets of a booming discipline"

The impact of injuries on the athlete's mind

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

To give an example, a person with a responsible coping style (one who focuses on the aspects of his life that are under his control, such as his skill or training) will tend to be injured less frequently than another person with a style of victimizing coping (that is, the one that tends to focus on external elements such as the state of the pitch, the toughness of the opponent, etc.).

The importance of stress

On the other hand, the psychological phenomenon that has been most closely related to the probability 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 when it comes to 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. generation. However, sometimes our body gives this response to non-life-threatening situations, such as an exam, a job interview or an important game.

In this way, stress has some useful consequences against rival tribes or saber-toothed tigers, but not so adaptive in a game of football.

On one side, our attentional processes narrow, which allows us to focus absolutely on the threatening and priority stimulus, but prevents us from generating that broad attention that most sports require.

On the other hand, our muscle tone can be affected, leaving our physique in non-optimal conditions to carry out the corresponding action and, therefore, more vulnerable to injury. Thus, proper stress management is a priority in sports if we want to prevent injuries.

Psychologically manage the effects of the injury

Any sport involves the component of competition and, therefore, all sports involve pressure (even more so if we talk about high-performance sports). Thus, the secret is not to reduce the pressure or fight it, but to learn to manage it.

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

1. cognitive restructuring

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

• Related article: "Cognitive restructuring: what is this therapeutic strategy like?"

2. relaxation techniques

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

• Related article: " 6 easy relaxation techniques to combat stress"

Rehabilitation

Regarding the rehabilitation period, the most notable psychological variables occur at an emotional level.

Motivation is a key factor in relation to adherence to treatment, and in order to maintain its highest levels, it is usual to resort to the establishment of short-term objectives, whose compliance is expected to generate a perception of self-efficacy in the athlete which in turn encourages his motivation for the exercises to be performed, both physically and emotionally. psychological. 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 sports and personal life of each player, so this fact can serve to focus the period of inactivity as one more learning, and since we will all be injured sooner or later, we can turn this obstacle into an opportunity if we manage it properly.