Recovering from Injuries: Body, Mind, and Spirit
Are you currently injured? If not, lucky you! Injuries affect every athlete, from the elite Olympian to the weekend racer. When it happens, it can feel like the most devastating event possible. While some athletes are destroyed by the experience, others emerge from their recovery better, stronger, and more confident than ever. How?
Photo credit: James Wirth
Rebound, a new book co-authored by Carrie Jackson Cheadle and Cindy Kuzma, offers a roadmap to work toward a swifter, stronger comeback from injury using mental skills and psychological tools that allow you to take control of your recovery and ultimately, use the experience to your advantage.
Bounce Back Stronger: Rebound with Carrie Jackson Cheadle and Cindy Kuzma
In this episode, we talk to Carrie and Cindy, both runners, who collaborated on this book. Sharing their own personal experiences and stories from close to 50 other injured athletes who came back strong. They will inspire and educate you about the psychological and mental aspects of coping and recovering from being injured.
Carrie lives in Northern California and is a mental skills coach and certified mental performance consultant. She has been interviewed for publications such as Men’s Fitness, Women’s Health, Outside Magazine, Shape Magazine, Runner’s World, Bicycling Magazine, and Huffington Post among many others. Carrie consults with athletes of all ages and at every level and is known for her expertise in sports performance and psychological recovery from injury. When she isn’t working with athletes, you might find her running on a trail, playing guitar, or hitting the slopes on her snowboard.
Cindy is a Chicago-based journalist with a specialty in fitness and health, a contributing writer at Runner’s World magazine, and co-author of Superfood Swap. She earned her master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and has spent the past 15 years writing for national print and online publications, including Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Prevention, and USA Today. She has also contributed to The Runner’s World Show and Human Race Podcasts, and is the producer and co-host of the podcast #WeGotGoals.
Questions Carrie and Cindy are asked:
2:53 First Four:
- Are you a runner? If so, How long have you been running?
- Where were you born?
- Where you are living now?
- What has been, one, single, outstanding success for you as an athlete?
8:20 Why do mental techniques matter for rebounding from injury?
10:24 What do each of you bring to the book Rebound and how did you meet?
15:09 How did you decide on the unique format of the book?
16:56 How can someone who’s injured use your book to work through their injury?
18:12 Who would be an example of someone you interviewed for the book who used these techniques and how did it tie in with the book and with them?
19:22 What were some of the specific tools Fiona Ford used in her rebound?
20:21 How does The Hero’s Journey apply to rebounding?
22:55 What personal experiences do each of you have with injury how did you apply these techniques in your rebound?
26:42 How can visualization be applied when rebounding?
30:21 How can athletes overcome anxiety regarding reinjury?
33:40 What role and impact does Community play?
38:41 What similarities did you discover among all the people you interviewed for the book?
43:48 How does PTSD relate to athletes and how can it be resolved?
46:54 Would your Facebook group help people identify if they need professional support?
48:18 What final take-aways would you like to share?
51:01 Final Kick Round:
- What is your favorite local training run or outing (location, starting point, parking, distance, terrain and safety issues)?
- Favorite book(s), video or resource?
- Who or what would you like to have featured on the Run To The Top podcast?
Quotes:
“We don’t often think about things like motivation, confidence, emotional intelligence, and generosity as skills and these are actually skills that are important to recovery.”
“When you’re injured, your still an athlete; recovery is now your sport.”
“Strength training was something that I could be doing even while I couldn’t run anymore and I started to feel that same kind of rush and empowerment and accomplishment that I did from running when I was able to lift something heavy and then lift something heavier and see those signs of progress.”
“Your brain is wired to protect your body and so having fears of reinjury or different injury are normal and it’s your brain’s way of trying to keep you on High Alert so you don’t injure yourself again. The thing that’s challenging is sometimes your brain keeps you on high alert when you don’t necessarily need to be on High Alert.”
“The different kinds of support that you need as an injured athlete, or really as a human being in general: you need Emotional Support, Motivational Support, Informational Support, and Tangible Support.”
“The whole idea of Rebound is that you might hit an impact point just like if you’re throwing a basketball towards the ground and it hits that impact point of the ground, is that you’ve hit a similar impact point, you’ve become injured as an athlete, and these are the tools you need in order to bounce. And the direction you bounce in might be in a direction you never could have even envisioned.”
Take a Listen on Your Next Run
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Mentioned in this podcast:
Run To The Top Winners Circle Facebook Community
Book: Rebound by Cindy Kuzma and Carrie Jackson Cheadle
Book: The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
China Camp State Park Running Trails
Book: How Bad Do You Want It? by Matt Fitzgerald
Book: Endure by Alex Hutchinson
SWAP Running – David & Megan Roche
Follow Carrie and Cindy on:
The Injured Athletes Club Facebook page
The Injured Athletes Club Podcast
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