Snowboarders and skiers get injured. It happens. No matter how amazing you are or how careful you are, it’s just something that will happen when you spend a lot of time on the slopes.
So how does it affect you and what should you do to get past injuries quickly?
What should you do after an injury?
Assuming you’ve either already been to the doctor or it’s not serious enough for a doctor’s visit, book a meeting with a physiotherapist. I know it can be a little expensive but doing at least 1-2 trips to the physio will speed up your recovery.
The muscles around an injury usually get weaker due to lack of use and pain. Physios will help to give you a game plan to get back to 100% quickly. It’ll usually involve showing you some simple exercises you can do to re-strengthen the muscles surrounding your injury.
Don’t skip your exercises!
This is the big step that a lot of people never follow. You need to do whatever exercises the physio gave you. A lot of people get injured and never fully rehab their injury. This leads to all sorts of chronic pain and muscle imbalances.
Don’t make excuses. If you want to recover quickly you need to put in the time to get better again. I know it can suck, especially if it’s a long rehab period, but you need to push past that if you want to get better quickly.
How does injury affect you?
Injuries can really play with your head. They can either make you mentally stronger or they can really destroy your confidence. You want the former, rather than the latter.
Don’t look at the negatives, look at the positive
Being positive is a huge part of coming out of injuries with a stronger mindset. There’s always negatives to an injury, but you need to forget about those and look at what you can learn from an injury.
For example:
I’ve had 3 knee surgeries now. Sure it sucks that my knee gets sore easily and I have to workout regularly to keep it strong enough to ride park, but what good is getting depressed about it going to do?
I like to look at my knee injury as a wake up call. Before my injury I didn’t go to the gym and didn’t look after myself. It made me realize that I had to do a better job of keeping myself in shape if I wanted to keep snowboarding until I’m old and wrinkly.
Mental toughness
The more injuries you overcome, the more you’ll build up a mental toughness. It’s a great feeling knowing that you managed to put in the time and effort to get yourself back to 100%.
Go face your demons
Getting past injuries can do great things for your confidence. I’d say it’s one of the best feelings in the world when you go back to that jump that injured you the last time and you conquer it.
Don’t let the fear of getting injured again affect your mindset. Get past that and you’ll be smiling. I still can’t help but smile when I spin tricks off the same jump in Whistler that broke my knee 4 years ago.
Stay safe on the slopes and I hope any of you with injuries have a quick recovery!