Don’t make a setback a crisis
Hello everyone, Mila here! First of thank you to all of those that have been reading my rant-style blogs over the last few months. This has been a very enjoyable way for me to share a mix of personal and professional insights on a bunch of my favorite topics. This month I wanted to talk about setbacks.
We’ve all been there.
You read my last blog on getting organized. Dialed in your workouts. You’re feeling good for weeks! And suddenly you do something that irritates your xyz pesky injury and you now feel like you’ve failed and totally gone backwards. Let’s discuss.
This happens to all of us.
Having a setback during training or irritating an injury is NOT indicative of you going backwards or having failed and starting over. Even pro athletes experience an occasional twinge or setback in their training. When setbacks happen, I first always go back to my notes and look at what I’ve done recently- have I increased volume or weight? Did I try a new exercise? How was my stress/sleep/nutrition around this time? I ask myself these questions and then I try to find something obvious. Perhaps a new exercise that had potential to aggravate my xyz. Or I notice I added more weight to some exercise. Or I skinned way faster or longer than last time. I find that modifiable thing and adjust for the following weeks and then assess how that affects me. Logical. In control. Thoughtful. Very demure. Now this is a fairly new development for me…
Stay calm and carry on.
Normally, I would experience a twinge/setback and I would FREAK out. I would catastrophize. I would be dramatic and tell myself I will never be able to snowboard or bike again and my body is broken and can’t recover. I would act like my body has betrayed me in some way and feel like a victim. Don’t judge, we've all been there! I realized this response was not serving me in any way and decided to take on the approach of staying calm and carry on instead.
Has my body betrayed me before? Sure.
I made a conscious decision to not go to that place. But is my body resilient, capable of building capacity and load and responsive to proper training? YOU BET! Yes I may be having a temporary issue right now, but I will make adjustments and get the train back on the tracks in time. That positive thinking and not dramatizing things has actually helped me recover that much faster, because that is how our brains work surrounding pain/discomfort. If you get your nervous system and stress involved, I promise it will last longer and feel worse.
Take the appropriate measures to get back on track.
Outside of not panicking, I get my PT team involved. By that I mean… My coworkers 😂 Regardless of your knowledge of human anatomy, it is always good to bounce things off a PT to make sure you aren’t letting emotions take over and confirm that you are taking the appropriate measures to heal or get back on track.
We all have the capacity.
Let’s all continue to stay organized with our notes. Let’s continue to progressively improve. And let’s all stay calm if that little injury rears its ugly head. We have the capacity to take care of it. That’s all for now!