Injury or Opportunity?
If we let it, pain and injury can become the prevailing focus of training when working with rehab clients or those suffering from chronic pain.
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Fear of re-injury grips the mind of both the trainer and trainee, creating avoidance behaviors, only widening the gap between the client and their desired outcome.
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Lisa actually hates this exercise but she’s taking it on as a necessary challenge. We began training one-arm inverted rows out of necessity when an upper body injury left her unable to use her left arm. Rather than belaboring the injury we chose to focus on new challenges.
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Part of a successful rehab model is the ability to recognize different vantage points in which we view our reality. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Of course nobody wants pain or injury. No athlete wants to be sidelined and no woman wants to live months of her life with a cast on her arm.
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However, the key to excelling in these realities is to change how we view them. Rather than focusing on injuries and setbacks we must frame it as an opportunity to develop another quality or conquer a challenge. Sometimes that challenge is a mental mountain and sometimes it‘s a physical one.
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Humans excel when faced with meaningful challenges. The ability to place meaning behind our situation can allow us to harness the emotional currency that comes that stress and adversity. Your ability as a coach to relay this to your client can be an gamechanger in the world of pain and rehabilitation.
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The following images I got from Bill Knowles demonstrates the two opposing mindsets that we can choose to have during training.
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Image 1: Frames the athlete’s injury/chronic pain as the focal point of training and conversation.
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Image 2: Frames the athletes overall development as the centerpiece with the injury/pain being a small piece if that overall reality.
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Empower & Elevate. Focus on finding success routes not escape routes.