Recovery from Injury - Research Proposal Example

Recovery from Injury Introduction In any type of competitive sport, it is quite common for professional athletes to suffer from physical injuries in the course of competition. Injuries are particularly common among college athletes because they may experience more pressure to impress talent scouts for more celebrated mainstream teams who may attend their practice sessions. Once an athlete is injured, he or she will experience a number of outcomes. In the first place, the incidence of injury forces the athlete in question to immediately cease training. It could also result in serious psychological problems for the athlete because he or she will likely experience a lot of self doubt. When a college athlete dedicates a lot of time and training to a particular sport, he or she essentially builds a personal identity around the said sport. Refraining from taking part in the sport, even if for a few days or weeks, can result in the athletes perception of him or her self being negatively affected. This is because the sport-related injury will remove the very reinforcements that cause the athlete to maintain a certain sense of autonomy, self-mastery and control. In addition, professional college athletes benefit in other ways from engaging in competitive sports. According to Arvinen-Barrow, Penny, Hemmings and Corr (2010), the human brain releases endorphins when a person takes part in exercises. Stopping from exercise participation can thus increase an athletes daily level of stress. Athletes are not just wounded when engaged in competitive sports. They can experience injury in the course of training. College athletes, in particular, tend to be more aggressive when exercising because they may be trying to catch the attention of talent scouts or successfully be enrolled in one of the national sports teams. It is not uncommon for coaches to subtly hint that real athletes have to accept that they have to endure increasing levels of pain in order to be considered as the right material for the increasingly competitive sports scene. This means that the athletes will believe in the notion that the more they endure in terms of pain and injury, the more they will become stronger in their preferred sport. The adoption of such beliefs can result in college athletes over-straining when they are training or playing sport. They may feel that unless their physical bodies have experienced excessive discomfort, then they have not reached their peak as professional athletes (Glazer, 2009). It then becomes easy for such an athlete to be unable to differentiate between the pain that comes with increased training and the pain that comes due to the body experiencing an injury. When they suffer from injury, athletes will manifest different emotional reactions. This is because they have different personalities and different injuries will result in different consequences. A serious injury can actually result in further turmoil as the athlete in question may have to go through further periods of extensive change. When an individual athlete goes through such serious change, it may result in a change in his or her social environment, personal relationships and even in how the individual perceives him or herself (Podlog, Immock and Miller, 2011). Such major changes taking place all at once can result in the manifestation of more negative feelings such as hopelessness, fear of the future, denial, disbelief, frustration, tension, irritation, anger, fatigue and apathy. Another issue that may delay the rate at which athletes’ sport-related wounds heal has to do with their reluctance to report serious injuries. According to Ivarsson and Johnson (2010), almost 35% of college athletes are reluctant to report sports-related injuries unless they are serious or life-threatening. This is mainly because of the macho character that exists in the sports world. All professional athletes are expected to exhibit bravery and perseverance in response to certain rough play and the resultant levels of pain. Many college athletes have coaches who encourage them to be tough and not show cowardice. In such circumstances, they do not wish to portray any indication of not being motivated or being misunderstood. The presence of injury inevitably results in being sidelined by the coach. It could also mean that the athlete is forced to give up on their one chance to shine or show their own particular talents to the people who might be instrumental in determining if they get included in celebrated teams. This means that wounded athletes are more likely to make the decision to hide their injuries, even in instances where they may incur serious damage. This then increases their chances of not being able to heal sufficiently to play again at peak physical condition. When athletes are wounded during training or when engaging in competitive sports, they may experience a considerable void in their lives. College students, in particular, also lose the feeling of gratification that is connected with being identified in the student body as being one of the most qualified athletes in their discipline (Rosendahl, Borman, Aschenbrenner, Aschenbrenner and Strauss, 2009). They may no longer benefit from the advantages of being perceived as a sporting maverick. In the midst of such transition, they also have to deal with feelings of vulnerability at an age when most people would want to be perceived as being completely fit and healthy. The consequences for college athletes who compete professionally are even more profound. Along with the feelings of loss, they also have to deal with the loss of fame, travel, a considerable salary and endorsements. Such losses will be felt even more keenly at a younger age than would be the case if the athlete in question had attained more maturity and stability in his or her mental life- which is not something that many people in their early twenties will have accomplished. For younger college athletes, the loss of all these things could result in a serious identity crisis. This is made harder to bear by the fact that, in order to become a master in a particular sport, an athlete can only specialize in one sport and not in two or more. Most college athletes who are training to play professionally began specializing in one sport when they were children. This means that, metaphorically, their eggs are all in one basket. They are accustomed to working in teams to accomplish different objectives. This means that they are accustomed to working with others and are likely to feel disconnected once they are removed from such a situation. College athletes who have been forced to leave their preferred sports as a result of injury have to contend with the sudden loss of applause and praise while dealing with an uncertain future. For athletes whose injuries are not so damaging for their careers, there are fewer adverse emotional reactions. Moreover, the different personalities of college athletes also affect their reactions to different kinds of injury. There are athletes who are more emotionally stoic and can take the incidence of physical injury in their stride. Such athletes will resolve their emotional reactions faster than athletes who may not have developed such stoicism. For some athletes, the occurrence of injury is deeply upsetting and can severely affect their mental health; particularly when their physical injuries do not heal as quickly as they expected. In extreme cases, where an athlete’s injury has forced him or her to retire early from his or her career, such athletes have been known to suffer from different negative emotions such as loneliness, the lack of confidence and depression. This then gives way to the abuse of drugs and alcohol and even possibly suicide. For athletes who use mental skills to overcome their fears when they experience physical injury, the use of mental imagery, relaxation, self-talk and goal-setting is quite common. In the aspect of mental imagery, there are skills that are cognitive-general, cognitive-specific, motivational-general mastery, motivational-general arousal and motivational-specific which can be used to maintain an athlete’s motivation. Relaxation, on the other hand, may include mind-to-muscle or muscle-to-mind techniques in which the athlete participates in regulating his or her arousal as well as activation levels. Self talk involves verbalizing one’s positive beliefs about the state of the physical body in order to encourage one’s self. When engaged in self-talk, athletes will speak to themselves, usually in private and try to increase their levels of engagement in the sport by directly addressing their own fears. In the factor of goal-setting, athletes can seek to concentrate on the achievement of great exploits in future so as to keep themselves motivated even through trying times. Such psychological skills can actually increase the engagement of athletes during injury rehabilitation so that the athletes are inspired to observe the rehabilitation regimen and regain their confidence in their own athletic abilities. There are other psychological factors that have a role to play in determining how quickly athletes recover from sports-related injuries and return to playing their sport. According to Sparkes and Smith (2009), the manifestation of positive psychological reactions to sports injuries is linked to the quick recovery of wounded college athletes. The self-determination theory describes three factors- competence, autonomy and relatedness- which factor in the recovery process of professional athletes in all levels. The factor of autonomy endorses the theory that there are psychological factors that support the notion that an individual’s actions are basically self-authored. In the concept of autonomy, self efficacy is linked to motivation and independence. According to Sparkes and Smith (2009) athletes who are more likely to return to sport after healing from their injuries are those who have higher levels of self-motivation and a positive understanding of their own role in the sport. The factor of competence has to do with the emotional as well as cognitive responses that form an athlete’s understanding of his or her competence in the preferred sport. Essentially, if an athlete sincerely feels that he or she is contributing significantly to the sport, even the incidence of a serious injury is not likely to stop him or her from opting to leave the sport. According to Stiller-Ostrowski, Gould and Covassin (2009), the athletes that are more likely to overcome the incidence of sport- related injury are those who have psychological responses that allow them to exhibit the belief that they will not incur additional injuries upon their return. The concept of relatedness has to do with an athlete’s comprehension of the level of his or her connectedness or sense of belonging to the sports group team, or fraternity in a social context. If an athlete has the support of an engaging community and took part in numerous activities within the sports team even before the injury, he or she is more likely to return to the sport even after incurring a serious physical injury. Hypothesis - The rate of recovery from sports-related injuries among college athletes is dependent on the extent to which they possess constructive psychological skills to motivate them and also on the existence or lack of supportive networks of friends and family. References Arvinen-Barrow, M., Penny, G., Hemmings, B., & Corr, S. (2010). UK charted physiotherapists’ personal experiences in using psychological interventions with injured athletes: An interpretative phenomenological analysis. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 11, 58-66. Glazer, D. D. (2009). Development and preliminary validation of the Injury-Psychological Readiness to Return to Sport (I-PRRS) scale. Journal of Athletic Training, 44(2), 185-189 Ivarsson, A., & Johnson, U. (2010). Psychological factors as predictors of injuries among senior soccer players. A prospective study. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 9, 347- 352 Podlog, L. D., Immock, J., & Miller, J. (2011). A review of return to sport concerns following injury rehabilitation: Practitioner strategies for enhancing recovery outcomes. Physical Therapy in Sport, 12, 36-42 Rosendahl, J., Borman, B., Aschenbrenner, K., Aschenbrenner, F., & Strauss, B. (2009). Dieting and disordered eating in German high school athletes and non-athletes. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 19, 731-739. Sparkes, A. C., & Smith, B. (2009). Judging the quality of qualitative inquiry: Criteriology and relativism in action. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 1-7. Stiller-Ostrowski, J. L., Gould, D. R., & Covassin, T. (2009). An evaluation of an educational intervention in psychology of injury for athletic training students. The Journal of Athletic Training, 44(5), 482-489. Read More