Injury Management!!!

Following a rather epic bike crach last Thursday in Slovenia, where the guy in front of me touched wheels with the guy in front of him and then came crashing down with me on top of him(!!), I have had a slight hiccup in training and had to focus on injury management. I came off the worst out of the two of us for sure, with two severely swollen and bruised patellas, and him with a bit of a cut on his finger!!! However the forced rest enables you to focus on the other aspects of the training that have a tendancy to get overlooked when training for IM as an amateur athlete.

Notably the issue of mental skills training has been at the forfront of my mind (excuse any pun) and I have used the time to rethink and review the current mental skills that I have been using up until now, and also tweaking where required, any skills that I think need adjusting to ensure that I am operating at peak performance. There is lots of empirical evidence to suggest that a period of 'forced rest' through injury enables an athlete (depending on his perspective and outlook) to come back mentally stronger than what he/she was prior to the injury.

Some of the techniques I have been using involve meditation to focus on the areas that are injured, to improve and encourage blood flow through the injured areas to assist the healing process. I find this technique whilst icing the area a fine mix of contemporary and holistic interventions to aid recovery. The side effects from the meditation are also worthy of a mention, which can be an increased ability to focus, or rather avoid distraction, of which I will be using during the race in Zurich. It is all too easy to let the mind drift to where it wants to go, rather than taking control and being able to focus on the key aspects of the race. Now clearly it could be very hard to focus entirely on racing for the whole period of the IM, however if we become aware of the times when the mind starts to wander then we can regain control be engaging in simple focusing techniques like those mentioned above.

Well I am off back to the ice machine for another re-fill to keep the swelling down.