View Full Version : Mentally recovering from injury
kinkymisspinky
10-02-2006, 09:39
Its been over two years since I did my back, physio said its fine to train and just belt for 100kg+ lifts. I used to love deadlifting but now every time I approach a deadlift I'm scared of hurting myself again. It's a really horrible place to be and its holding me back. How do you mentally recover from an injury? Do you ever get over it? Or will you always be a little afraid of repeat injury?
I ****ed my shoulder up on my bike when i was about 16, for years and years afterwards it was forever partially dislocating whenever i fully extended that arm under load, which was alot doing bike trials, and the more i did it the more likely it made it to happen again, it was so weak at some points it would happen just throwing a dart, it's been fine for 3 or 4 years now but i'm still too scared to throw a stone or go to complete lcokout at the bottom of a pull up
Black Knight
10-02-2006, 10:17
Its been over two years since I did my back, physio said its fine to train and just belt for 100kg+ lifts. I used to love deadlifting but now every time I approach a deadlift I'm scared of hurting myself again. It's a really horrible place to be and its holding me back. How do you mentally recover from an injury? Do you ever get over it? Or will you always be a little afraid of repeat injury?
Agree 100%
Everytime I deadlift heavy, its on my mind which is why I dont think I'll go for 1rm or indeed reps over 3 with heavier weights ever again. Its very frustrating but I could do without that much back pain in my life again because it interferes with everything, not just lifting!
I'm sure the physiological effects caused by the conscious and sub-conscious anxiety and stress would actually leave you more succeptable to injuring yourself, such factors as increased cortisol levels and blood pressure meaning less oxygen reaching the muscles, let me get my text book and i'll pull out more factual assumptions...
Have you thought about methods like imagery and visualisation before sessions and a structured programme of positive feedback after completed sessions, as I believe this would help to solve this problem. If you want me to go into further explanation of methods on this then I am quite willing too as I am studying sports psychology but if you think it's hippy-shit i dont wanna type a long reply for it to be ignored! :)
Oh and to say yes of course it is easily possible to totally recover from the fear created by injuring yourself.
The type of fear you describe here is simply triggered by negative association of certain situations, in your case Deadlifting (the stimulus) and the percieved likely outcome, Injury, and anxiety is the response.
Developing your response to that of not percieving injury to be the most likely eventuality will take time but can be done and so the fear will be removed.
kinkymisspinky
10-02-2006, 17:47
I'm sure the physiological effects caused by the conscious and sub-conscious anxiety and stress would actually leave you more succeptable to injuring yourself, such factors as increased cortisol levels and blood pressure meaning less oxygen reaching the muscles, let me get my text book and i'll pull out more factual assumptions...
Have you thought about methods like imagery and visualisation before sessions and a structured programme of positive feedback after completed sessions, as I believe this would help to solve this problem. If you want me to go into further explanation of methods on this then I am quite willing too as I am studying sports psychology but if you think it's hippy-shit i dont wanna type a long reply for it to be ignored! :)
No, I don't think its hippy-shit at all. In my case whether I make a lift or not is down to what I believe. Anxiety does sound about right, especially yesterday when I kept missing my deads (though not sure how much of yesterday's performance was down to my head hurting).
I often visualise prior to a lift but generally not outside of training time. Sometimes its quite hard and negative thoughts pop into my head, I'll be merrily psyching up and out of nowhere I see myself fail the lift. Once fairly recently, mid-set I saw myself failing the next rep. Imagining deadlifting makes me feel horrible and panicked.
What do you mean by a structured programme of positive feedback?
Definitely won't be ignoring your advice. It would be much appreciated. Cheers, matey.
To be honest your best bet is to confront your fears and just do whatever it is that's scaring you
Once you realise that nothing bad's happened, you'll feel a whole lot better
That's the approach I've used this far and it's made me feel confident to train again...mind you, I don't think I'll be buggering around with 1 rep training, purely because it won't be even slightly productive to my goals
Right here we go.....
Currently your subconscious perception of performing a taxing deadlift is that it will lead to an injury, and this has been created by your previous experiences and has been reinforced by the physiological reaction caused by the body (e.g. pain) and the psychological reactions (e.g. stress caused by the pain and stress caused by change in lifestyle as not being able to do things you enjoy).
The key aim is to train your subconscious mind to believe that the resultant experience as you are about to deadlift is not that of that you are about to be injured.
This is similar in “Pavlov’s Dog” experiment of conditioning the body to create a certain response to a given stimulus. Your current stimulus is the deadlift and your current conditioned response is of anxiety and fear of injury.
Firstly I would suggest using visualisation as a method of helping to overcome this.
I suggest (if you don’t already) that you plan your sessions in advance in terms of what weights and reps you are planning to use in the forthcoming session.
Then, find a quiet place where you can relax, laying or sitting depending on your preference and visualise yourself entering the gym setting up and everything you do when you going to the gym, then visualise your workout.
For example if you are doing 20kgx2, 30kgx2, 40kgx2, 50kgx2, 60x2, with 1 minute rest periods you should visualise the whole session, including what you do in between sets (drink water, walk around, talk – if you’re a bicep boy!).
Make sure you focus on the SUCCESSFUL and INJURY FREE completion of these lifts and that the pleasure you gain from this. Obviously the weights you will be using will be sub-maximal weights compared to those of which you know you can use, but the aim is to complete everything injury free.
I would suggest doing this the day before a few times and on the day of training a few times also. There is no time limit just take your time and aim to recreate the situation as accurately and intensely as you possibly can.
Focus on the joy and pleasure gained by the successful completion of these lifts after completion.
DO NOT visualise the unsuccessful attempt at any deadlift at any point. If you do, as you have been saying you have, I have a plan to help to rectify this.
This leads me on to your attributions. Attributions are your own personal explanations for situations (success/failure in this situation).
If you do visualise an unsuccessful attempt at any deadlift at any point, you should attribute your failure to an external unstable factor, e.g. some bicep boys grunting loudly whilst doing bicep curls in the squat rack distracted you! Attributing your failures to external factors (e.g. factors out of your control – in the case I just mentioned, the bicep boys) and to unstable factors (e.g. factors that there is no guarantee that they will re-occur – in the case I just mentioned, the bicep boys may not make so much noise time) will lead you to removing the “Learned Helplessness” that you may have developed.
Learned Helplessness is where you attribute your failures (in your case your failure of failing to perform a deadlift correctly and injuring your back) to internal factors (e.g. your own failures of your skills and abilities) and stable factors (e.g. factors that are unlikely to change) and the resultant situation is that you believe that the failure is inevitable every time the same previously failed situation is replicated as your personal reasoning behind it is that the factors involved were internal (your fault) and stable (unlikely to change).
Attribution retraining can also be used if any of your sets you do fail. The difficulty with attributing your failure to external factors with regularity is that you can create what is known as a “Self-Serving Bias”, where failure is constantly attributed to external factors in an attempt to protect one’s ego by not blaming oneself for failure.
So here I believe attributing failure to internal unstable factors is a fairly effective method. Possible internal unstable factors include: your level of perceived effort, your technique (although maybe not too good in this situation), your current emotions, your current health state (e.g. you have got a bit of a cold).
This will help you to believe that failure in not inevitable as can be changed as it is was due to an unstable factor which can be easily rectified by correcting the reasoning for the failure.
Also make sure when you are making any sort of feedback (as I will talk about in the next paragraph) make sure you are attributing any success to internal factors, e.g. your levels of perceived effort, your levels of dedication, your excellent form, your levels of strength etc.
This will lead you to believe that you can easily replicate the previous situation, and thus help you to believe that successful deadlifting is a regular occurrence in your training schedule.
To accompany all this you can also include structured positive feedback.
After each of the sets you complete in the real workout (without injuring yourself) positively reinforce this successful behaviour by congratulating yourself.
In your training diary you can use methods of providing feedback to your perception of the success of your set.
For example, you can use a qualitative method such as writing a brief note on how you felt your form was for the set, e.g. “Perfect form” or “Could of drove hips through more but was good form” but make sure the feedback is constructive if negative and always contains some positive.
Also the use of a quantitative method, I suggest ticks next to successful sets, would allow you to create a reward scheme of where a certain amount of successful sets (e.g. 10) will allow you to gain a reward. The reward must be of perceived value to you, maybe a chocolate bar or something that you normally don’t have.
The use of quantitative and qualitative feedback allows for subjective analysis to help critique your form and gives you whilst quantitative data provides the statistical analysis that gives us the grounds to judge the increase/decrease in performance by, vital in convincing yourself that you will not be injured in the future.
Feedback can also be used in an external form. You can get someone to critique your form, say every 4 weeks and give you constructive feedback on your form. However the person doing this must be of “significant value” to you.
What I mean by this is that you respect them and the opinion that they give in terms of their knowledge on the successful and SAFE completion of the deadlift. This can also be noted and compared between assessments and used as reinforcement for your hopefully injury free completion of deadlifting.
This can be linked also into goal setting. Whereas you deadlift one session per week doing 5 sets, you aim for 3 perfect sets per session (for example), and maybe every 8 weeks you aim to complete 25 perfect sets. Of course this is dependant on what method (qualitative or quantitative) of feedback you decided to use. Of course will all goal setting you must use SMART goal setting. So goals must be Specific, Measurable, Adjustable, Realistic and Time Based. Again rewards (specific to you) can be used to create positive reinforcement of your successful behaviour.
There is a fine line between the over-use of rewards and optimal use but only you yourself will be able to establish that optimal level to help reinforce your new beliefs of deadlifting with regularity without injury.
Of course these are all just some suggestions of proven sports psychological methods for you that I believe you can use to build your Self-Efficacy (Situation specific Self-Confidence) in deadlifting. Of course the inclusion of all of them in some form would be the most efficient way of eradicating your problem, and I’m sure there are many other methods that can be used, but its 1.00am and I am tired so this is the ones that I can think are most applicable and beneficial for you to use in this situation.
Most important is to keep a positive mental attitude and belief that you will get over this and you will be deadlifting regularly injury free, as it is a simple psychological barrier that with time, patience, planning and effort can be easily overcome.
****ing hell, 1500 words in this reply, if you need any more help or want something clearing up as I’m not sure how well this reads as am tired and can’t be bothered to proof read this - sorry!
Matt
:119: My brain hurts now!!
kinkymisspinky
11-02-2006, 09:41
Thank you. I will take some time to read over it and will ask more questions if there's anything I don't understand.
Black Knight
11-02-2006, 10:39
To sum up briefly, are you talking about NLP strategies?
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