By: Connor Sand
While the physical rehabilitation of an athlete after injury is obviously important for their return to sport, the psychological side of injury rehabilitation plays just as important of a role. In talking with Joel Condreay on the paired podcast, this became even more evident as I was able to hear his thought process while navigating the first six months of his Tommy John rehab after tearing his Ulnar Collateral Ligament. Once athletic injury has been conceptualized as a stressor in the life of an athlete, they then evaluate or appraise that stressor in accordance with personal or situational factors (Williams, 2015).The response to injury comes from how the athlete is able to perceive the injury; this cognitive appraisal they develop determines the emotional response which then determines the following behavior in their injury rehabilitation. The way an athlete perceives their injury sets the tone for their entire injury rehabilitation.
Cognitive Appraisal
Personal and situational factors both play a role in how the athlete will interpret the injury, otherwise known as their cognitive appraisal. Personal factors include the injury type and severity as well as the individual’s age; while the situational factors are the sport, level of competition and the social aspect of that sport (Williams, 2015). For Joel, who tore his UCL as a 23-year-old professional baseball player, the interpretation of the injury was serious but because of the factors he had in place, he interpreted the injury with positivity moving forward. One of the biggest personal factors that can influence an athlete’s perception of their injury is how much of their identity is tied to their status as an athlete. With any athlete, especially high-level athletes, those who aren’t able to separate their competitive identity from themselves as a person can experience the oncoming emotional response to be negative because of the way they perceive the injury is affecting their life. Luckily for Joel, although he mentions himself as a “ballplayer” while identifying himself, he was also able to identify himself as a goal-oriented person which brought forth other ways to achieve that satisfaction he gets from accomplishment in sports. As for situational factors, Wiese-Bjornstal established three major types of situational factors which are sport factors, social factors, and environmental factors. For Joel, he had positivity for all three of these situational measures. The sport factor was the timing of this injury, which happened two months before spring training. While looking past the initial let down of the injury, being able to have a full year of rehabilitation before the next season started turned this into a positive situational factor in Joel’s mind. He had a great social factor by having his family as his go-to coping resource along with immersing himself in other activities such as reading and video games. The ability to have outsourced coping resources also plays a role to why he was able to not rely on his athletic identity while not being able to compete. Lastly, he was going to have access to top notch rehabilitation programs and unlimited resources to help him along the way. Most athletes aren’t able to look at such a devastating injury the way Joel did and have such a positive cognitive appraisal, but this defined Joel’s emotional response.
Emotional Response
Although in Joel’s case, his cognitive appraisal of the injury was mostly positive, that doesn’t take away the frustration, devastation, and let down he felt immediately after the injury. Typically, with injuries of this magnitude, the frustration and negative response can last 1-3 weeks (Williams, 2015). With the positive personal and situational factors he had in place, this stage of emotional response lasted approximately one week before he was able to “think about the situation rationally instead of emotionally.” There are four main themes that can describe the interplay of cognitions on the emotional response: (1) internal thoughts (2) injury and rehabilitation concerns (3) concern for and comparison to others (4) looking ahead to the future (Tracey, 2003). A combination of these cognitions led Joel to describe his emotional thought process in two parts once he got past the initial phase of frustration. First off, he was able to look at his injury and not have any regrets about the process that led him there. Immediately after suffering the injury there was understandably frustration because he wasn’t going to be able to show off the progress he made during the offseason and wouldn’t be able to play at all in 2020. Being proud of the training and process he was engaged in made the fact he got injured easier to accept. This setback was suffered during a process that was helping him get better, and the only way to have avoided this would to not be doing everything in his control to further himself athletically. The second thought process Joel found comfort in with his injury was being able to look ahead to the future and understand that he had a great opportunity to come out the other side of the rehab better than he was before. He is now going to get a full year to rehab his UCL, a full year in the weight room, and a full year to improve himself mechanically before Spring Training 2021 starts. His success in the next year is completely up to himself and the ability to control the narrative. This next year will be a success with an efficient rehab process even without playing in a game.
Behavioral Response
With an accurate interpretation of the injury and a positive emotional response, the rehabilitation process and adherence to rehab becomes easier for Joel, which leads to a more successful rehab and comeback to baseball. Any injured athlete wants to get healthy and will most likely adhere to the steps to do so, but having positive cognitive and emotional appraisals about the injury itself opens up for more success and a better outlook on rehab. This healthy adherence to rehab creates positive coping skills and will bring forth more positive rehabilitation strategies. For Joel, as mentioned earlier, he has been able to cope with family support and external activities that don’t necessarily involve baseball, allowing him to keep his injured athletic identity separate from what he depends on to describe himself as a person. A positive rehabilitation strategy Joel has been working with physically and psychologically has been goal setting. Goal setting can be broken down into two categories which are Process Goal and Outcome goals (Williams, 2015). Process Goals are goals that focus on the process to the end result and can be described as short-term goals. Outcome Goals are the overall end result wanted, in this case that would be a successful rehab. With Joel’s UCL rehabilitation, the completion of multiple process goals will get him to the right checkpoints he is striving to be at by a certain time. This could look like being able to lift a certain amount of weight or being able to throw from a certain distance,and the completion of those process goals will have him on the right path to an outcome goal of throwing off a mound again. By using Goal Setting and focusing on process goals, Joel has been able to remember that there is an overarching outcome goal at the end of this year long journey. Something that Joel mentions as a big influence on his mindset is that goal setting helps with having the small measurables to strive for and give yourself a sense of accomplishment. With this being an extended rehab process, getting to accomplish things along the way and strive for those process goals gives you motivation to keep going and the want to continue achieving them.
We can see from talking with Joel that even though he may not be struggling with the mental side of his injury, the psychological aspects of injury rehabilitation run throughout his own rehab process and have set the stage for a healthy and successful return to sport.
Tracey, Jill. (2003). The Emotional Response to the Injury and Rehabilitation Process. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology - J APPL SPORT PSYCHOL. 15. 279-293.
Wiese-Bjornstal, D. M., Smith, A. M., Shaffer, S. M., & Morrey, M. A. (1998). An integrated model of response to sport injury: Psychological and sociological dynamics. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 10(1), 46–69.
Williams, J. M. (2015). Injury Risk and Rehabilitation: Psychological Considerations. In C. B. Scherzer (Ed.), Applied Sport Psychology(7th ed., pp. 462-489). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Comments
Post a Comment