Written and Media by Christian Caldozo.
Injury, it is defined in the dictionary as the act of being damaged or hurt. Injury has been notoriously known in the sports world to put athletes out during their season, and in even worse circumstances, ended their season or even their career. Injury is just a word that no athlete wants to hear. Period.
What people take for granted is the psychological standpoint when an athlete gets injured. This is what makes or breaks an athlete, especially at a higher level, such as college or professional. But the focus of today will be on the psychological standpoint of athletes and injury, simply because it takes more of a toll on athletes than one thinks.
When an athlete gets injured, they go through a process in their head about the injury. Usually, the first thing an athlete must do is diagnose what they just injured, and of course, depending on the injury, they think about what it might affect. Psychologically, this really affects an athlete’s mind depending on what time of the season they are in. “How am I going to come back to the same shape I was in before the injury?” is usually a question they ask.
What most people do not understand is, once an athlete gets injured, they are not the same person they were before. They cannot move the same way they were able to move before the injury, and that is really something a lot of people take for granted. The biggest example of this is current NBA player Derrick Rose for the Cleveland Cavaliers; people forget that he was an MVP of the NBA at one point. Unfortunately, injury really took over his career and he will never be the same explosive player he was before. So, an athlete must take time and hard work just to get to that point they were at before the injury, if that is even possible for some athletes.
Sophomore Kyler Stork of the Greenville Men’s Basketball Team offered an insight from when he was injured, saying, “After I dislocated my kneecap I soon noticed that I wasn’t the same athlete that I was. No matter how hard I tried I could never cut as fast or jump as high as I used to before the injury.”
Overall, the mental aspect of an injured athlete is always taken for granted. It requires plenty of positivity and help in order to get back to 100 percent. Fans usually do not get to see this side of what an athlete has to go through; hopefully, this article changes some people’s perspective on injured athletes.
Check out this video that helps injured athletes!
