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The Mental Comeback from Injury
One of the most challenging things for any athlete is returning to competition from serious injury. You are physically struggling with healing the injury, improving your conditioning, getting your timing and reaction speed back, sharpening your technique and possibly still dealing with some pain. Often more troublesome is the mental return from injury. Your confidence can be shattered and can remain lacking long after the physical remnants of the injury have been resolved.
When you return to competition or even just practice from a serious injury, you almost can’t help concentrating your focus on things that are only partially in your control: you worry about how you stack up against your competition (who have not been hurt and have been training this whole time). You may worry about what other people think about your chances of a full recovery. You may wonder if people think you look good out there on the track. What are they saying? What do they think? What do you sponsors think?
When you are making a comeback from injury it is very important to concentrate your focus only on the things that you totally have control over: the training, your technique out on the track, your nutrition, healthy lifestyle habits, etc. Limiting your focus and mental concentration on the things that you directly control puts your energy where it does the most good for your successful return. If you think about it placing energy into areas where you have no control actually has zero effect on your ultimate outcome; it is just a waste of valuable energy that could be helping you. This is true all the time but is even more important when coming back from injury.
This is even harder at races. The tendency is to come back to racing and spend all your attention to only the race result. Yes, results are important but a race result is truly only partially under your control. You cannot control how your competitors ride. You can only control how your ride. In keeping with the theme above, you should again limit your focus to the things you can control and in the race this means race execution. Race execution includes how well you use proper technique during the race, proper line selection, etc. It also includes the things that support your performance like race day diet and hydration, proper warm up, resting and recovering between motos, your race week preparations, etc.
Another important thing that gets overlooked in the pressure cooker of racing is the enjoyment factor. You have been forced to not ride for an extended period due to your injury. You need to be able to let yourself enjoy how fun it is to be riding again and how great it is to be seeing your friends again at the track. It is not all about the race results or lap times; when you are returning from injury it also needs to be about having fun again and enjoying the competitive nature of racing. The positive feelings and energy generated by just enjoying the riding and racing will pay big dividends in the long term motivation needed to continue training and working to overcome the injury completely. I call this “making deposits into the bank of motivation” and it is an important step in the long term recovery process. Don’t skip it! Let yourself enjoy your return to the track!
Injuries are an unfortunate reality of this sport. Coming back from injury is an ability that you need to hone for a successful long term career in motocross. Just like any ability it will improve with experience and practice. Consider recovery from injury as a part of your motocross skill set. Injuries are no doubt a huge negative but it is also a chance to mature and grow as an athlete. Really try to make the most of it and become a “good healer” as I like to say. You can truly make a positive out of a negative and become a stronger and better-rounded athlete after the injury. Often an athlete will tell me that an injury was the best thing that could have happened to him or her. They mature as an athlete while working hard to come back from injury and they realize how much they love and enjoy the sport. They appreciate being able to do the sport and compete and no longer take any of this for granted. They continue to prosper in the sport and you can too. Keep that chin up! Focus on what you can control and have fun out there!
