“Hey, don’t cry,” the ER nurse said as she approached my hospital bed. “I got that arm back.”
Yes, it was. It took two doctors, a nurse, me, the threat of general anesthesia, and two giant IV bags of painkillers to do this. And it still hurt like hell. But that’s not why I was crying.
My season ended due to my injury.
I was doing some simple shoulder stretches at home, which I had done many times before, when suddenly my shoulder dislocated. The sound was disgusting. The pain was immediate. Then, after trying (and failing) to put the shoulder back into its socket on my own, I headed to the ER. Also.
It was the first time I had dislocated my shoulder while stretching, but it was the third time in recent years that my shoulder had come off the socket and never returned to normal and ended up in the ER. And according to the doctor’s explanation, Strike Three means surgery.
That was in August 2016. Less than two months later, I had surgery, becoming yet another professional athlete with a career-interrupting injury.
It’s a universally acknowledged truth that injuries are the worst, and pain isn’t even the worst part for athletes. For someone who lives to compete, the hardest part of an injury is not being able to do what you love (training and racing). Most of us experience that disappointment at some point. Injuries are frustratingly common in endurance sports. We push our bodies to their limits and ask them to cover hundreds of miles in multiple athletic disciplines each week. It’s not surprising that it breaks or fails from time to time.
Until it happens to you. It’s definitely surprising and more than a little heartbreaking. If you’re lucky and your injury is relatively minor, you can heal it on your own in a few days or weeks with a little smart self-care and rehabilitation. But if your injury is serious enough to require long-term medical attention, as it was for me, you’ll have to play the long game, and how long you have to play will depend on how well you play. Here I will share what I learned from spending about a year on the sidelines and how to recover faster from injuries.
find the right doctor
Finding a medical professional who is familiar with your sport, has an excellent reputation and extensive experience treating athletes is key to speeding diagnosis and recovery. That’s because they understand how injuries affect athletic performance in your sport, so they can customize your treatment plan and give you a realistic prognosis for how long it will take you to return to training and racing. Trust me when I say that “insider” care like this can make a big difference, especially when it comes to minimizing recovery time.
How do you find such a doctor? Ask friends and training buddies for advice, talk to your coach, and (most importantly) do your own research. Before I finally decided on a doctor to perform my surgery, I did some Google research since there were no shoulder surgeons west of the Rocky Mountains. I ultimately chose him because he is a competitive cyclist, has a track record of success in treating athletes, and was highly recommended by a physical therapist friend who I trust implicitly. I knew I had found the right doctor when my friend said, “EK, I trust him completely. I have seen hundreds of his patients.” It’s your body and you want to make sure you trust the person you choose to repair it 100 percent.
accept your situation
As the saying goes, “hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.” Once you receive your post-injury diagnosis and prognosis, be prepared to accept it, whether it’s what you hoped for or not.
I believed that advice the hard way. When I went to see my shoulder specialist to hear the MRI results, I was hoping he would tell me that the injury could be cured with intensive physical therapy. Instead, he said there was a 100 percent chance my shoulder would dislocate again without surgery. “Surgery is a matter of when, not if,” he says.
His diagnosis hit me like a freight train. I wanted to cry. I struggled not to scream. I bit my tongue, resisting the urge to say that if he couldn’t understand that my injury wasn’t serious, his years of medical experience must have been for nothing.
Of course I was wrong and he was right, but it took me a while to accept that. Some people liken the psychological process of coping with a serious injury to the psychological process of grieving. This suggests that both go through the same process of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I still don’t know what stage I was in when I received the knife a few weeks later. I knew I had to do this to have any hope of continuing to be a professional athlete, but I still hadn’t come to terms with my situation. I didn’t find any other options that could help me get back to racing.
Learn from my mistakes. If you are recovering from an injury, especially one that requires surgery, we encourage you to do everything you can to get through the grieving process as quickly as possible. It’s easier said than done, but if you surround yourself with strong people who you trust and love, and who feel the same way about you, the process will go much faster. These will help you understand that your injury is just a moment in your sporting activity. It doesn’t define you and it won’t last forever. It’s almost a rite of passage. When you realize all of this, you can finally begin to heal.
I speak from experience. After reaching the acceptance stage, everything is all — much easier now. It took me almost two months to get there, but once I got there, I decided not to rush into rehab and just stick to my treatment plan to the letter. Almost immediately, my progress began to accelerate.
Treat rehabilitation like training
Endurance athletes are incredible creatures. Success in our job requires intense focus, a strong work ethic, and an unwavering dedication to the sport. All of this will help you get through the ups and downs of training and racing, including injuries.
It took me a while to accept my situation post-injury, but in the end I devoted myself to my rehabilitation with the same grit and enthusiasm I had put into my training. I went to physical therapy for an hour three times a week and did mind-numbing and boring rehabilitation twice a day. Don’t get me wrong. My road to recovery was not a smooth one. On the contrary, my arm and shoulder complex had been unstable for many years and had learned many dysfunctional patterns to compensate. It took me longer than expected to break out of these patterns, but I stayed focused, tried to stay positive, and kept telling myself that everything would work out in the end (and of course it did).
Through it all, I refused to be just an “injured athlete” and just idly waited for my shoulder to heal. I used all the free time I would have spent training to pursue other passions and pastimes. This helped me keep my head in a good position. I also learned how important it is to maintain a sense of humor. The road to rehabilitation isn’t always easy, so staying energized is an important part of staying motivated. Indeed, maintaining the ability to keep laughing at yourself during dark times can be powerful medicine.
Focus on what you can do, not what you can’t do
After an injury, it’s easy to get caught up in everything you’ve lost. Your training buddies may be posting all kinds of PRs on Strava and talking about upcoming events with the same excitement and enthusiasm that you usually do. A competitor may be winning a race that you feel you could have won. You may also be required to fill out a race refund request instead of a registration form. But you have to learn to train your brain to shut it all out and focus on what you want. can Because, believe me, there’s still a lot you can do to stay in shape and work toward your goals.
Although he could no longer use his right arm, he was able to swim using only his left arm three or four times a week from mid-November to March. This amounted to nearly five months of one-arm swimming, but it meant I was able to get in the pool, meet my teammates, and maintain water sensation, which is important for swimming mechanics. I also spent a lot of time in the pool doing vertical kicks and kicks with fins and kickboards, all of which turned me into a complete devil kicker. Now there is no one on my team who can touch me with a kick!
Outside of the pool, I took long walks, ran on the AlterG (anti-gravity) treadmill, rode gently on the trainer, and worked out with a strength coach at the gym (mainly core and lower body conditioning). Progress was slow, but my coach and I were able to gradually increase my training volume, and by April or May I was able to put together 13 to 15 hours of training per week. Granted, this is less than half the time I spend training each week, but I was making progress and feeling great.
focus on prevention
Once you experience a side job, you never want to go back. The best way to do that is to “prefab”. This means incorporating exercises into your training program that will help prevent future injuries. Even after my shoulder has healed, I continue to do joint-specific strength training and mobility training to keep it healthy.
I also can’t stress enough the importance of following a full-body strength and conditioning program. Although you don’t need to go to the gym as often as running, swimming, or cycling, spending a few hours each week can improve your speed and power and greatly reduce your risk of injury.
Winter is the perfect time to build your strength base. This will help you get your body strong enough to cover all the miles you have planned for spring. So is eating a healthy diet, getting enough sleep, and regular self-care (foam rolling, stretching, mobility training, etc.). If you take care of your body, you will be rewarded.
