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Bouncing Back from Injury: The Mental Battle

Jun 18, 2025

Bouncing Back from Injury: The Mental Battle

Injury, it is more than just a setback. Only hearing the word can stir up frustration, fear, and uncertainty, especially for athletes. One moment you’re training hard, chasing your athletic goals, pushing your limits, and feeling unstoppable. Next, you're on the sidelines watching from the bench, wondering when or if you’ll get back to where you were. While rehabilitation often focuses on physical healing, the mental battle of psychological readiness is just as real. And often, just as tough.

The Emotional Nature of Injury 

From the moment athletes receive the diagnosis of their injury, they can feel a complex range of emotions such as shock, denial, anger, frustration, sadness, or even fear. Reactions to an injury can differ amongst athletes, but they are all well-documented psychological responses. If you are an athlete who identifies deeply with your sport, an injury can feel like a personal crisis that has disrupted your goals, structure, and sense of purpose. 

An injury can often threaten your sense of self, especially in competitive environments where the sport is central to your sense of being. It is completely natural to be concerned about one’s form, losing one’s position in the team, fear of not being able to reach one’s previous abilities, and feeling not quite yourself while sitting on the sidelines. However, with the right support, these emotions and responses can be worked through, and often you could be back in the field stronger and more resilient, both physically and emotionally. Any feelings that you might experience are not trivial, and it is not only important to acknowledge and address them, but also essential.

The Mind Plays a Role in Recovery 

Recovering from an injury is not just about healing the body; it’s also about strengthening your mind. It has been indicated that when athletes use psychological interventions in the context of their injuries, they tend to cope better with setbacks in the future, reduce their injury suspensibility, stay more active with rehab and recover from injuries, and return to sport with higher levels of confidence (1)

The question remains: how can the mind play a role in recovery? Turns out, the mind plays a bigger and more complex role than you realise. It's more than just staying positive; it’s about developing a mindset that will help you to deal with the frustration, build your confidence, and, most importantly, keep your mind active and engaged. So, how do you actually train your brain? Let’s explore some proven mental strategies that can support you along this way. 

Goal Setting - It is quite natural to look forward to the day you make your return to sport. That moment can feel like a finish line, an accomplishment, but focusing only on that distant day often draws your attention to everything you’ve lost, everything you’re currently unable to do. That mindset, while completely understandable, can feel overwhelming and quite disheartening. Instead, it would be more helpful to shift your focus to what you can do, day by day, week by week. One of the most effective ways to do this is by using goal-setting strategies (2,3), particularly working backwards from your long-term goal, which in this case could be returning to play. 

Let’s work through it with an example. Let’s say it is indicated and you’re told that you could return to play in six months. Rather than rushing through rehab in an attempt to speed things up, try to establish your return in 6 months as an outcome goal. Now, break the outcome goal down and identify various performance goals that could be your milestones that you need to reach along the way to achieve your long-term goal. These could include activities such as reaching a gaining a certain range of motion in your joint by month two or passing a fitness test by month five. Next, set process goals, which are your daily and weekly actionables that will help you to achieve your performance goals. These actions are in your control and could include attending rehab sessions every day, logging eight hours of sleep, maintaining the recommended diet for healing, or journaling your progress. Although these goals may seem minor in nature, they would create structure and consistency in your recovery. By using this approach to goal setting, you are no longer just a passenger on your journey to heal; you are an active participant in your recovery, taking it one step at a time, one day at a time. 

Visualisation - While an injury can keep you sidelined from physically training, your mind can still be active and train in the game. Visualisation is a powerful technique that involves creating vivid and detailed mental images in the mind of yourself performing either a particular skill, movement, or scenario. In other words, you would be mentally rehearsing the movements while engaging your visual senses and emotions as if you were performing them in real life, allowing you to maintain your fundamental skills. It is a powerful and useful tool that could help you to stay connected to your sport even when your physical movement is limited. You could picture yourself running, making a tackle, kicking the ball in a particular manner, or shooting the ball. Visualisation allows you to have the full experience of your sport by simply allowing you to stay mentally connected to your sport. 

Wondering how just mentally rehearsing your movements would help you? Visualisation is proven to be effective because it activates many of the same neural pathways involved in actual physical movement that would otherwise be performed (4). Hence, this mental rehearsal allows the brain to keep practising the motor skills, helping your mind and body to maintain the connection. Let’s work through it with a few examples. If you are a tennis player with an injured wrist, you could close your eyes and mentally rehearse your serve. Right from the beginning, from feeling the weight of your racket, bouncing the ball, swinging your racket, imagining the perfect follow-through, to the ball landing exactly where you aimed. This mental practice will reinforce your motor and technical skills. Additionally, mentally rehearsing your movements in a vivid and detailed manner keeps the brain-body connection active, helping reduce your nervousness when you return to play. Hence, you could go back to training feeling more confident and familiar with your movements and fundamental skills.

Stay connected and seek support - Recovering from an injury can be isolating and lonely. This isolation as a result of the lack of a regular training routine and the competition environments can impact your mental well-being and stir up a number of emotions, such as sadness, anger, frustration, or fear. Hence, it is very important to stay connected with your team, coaches, and other members of the sports environment. Simply being present at practices, attending team meetings, and maintaining contact with your teammates instill a strong sense of belonging. These connections are crucial to reinforce your identity and could be helpful to feel that you are an important part of something. Not only would this be motivating during the time of recovery, but it will also increase your readiness when you decide to return to play. 

While seeking support socially is important, reaching out to a sports psychologist can provide significant mental and emotional support, making an essential contribution to your recovery. Working with a sports psychologist can better equip you to process the various emotions that come with an injury by using the above-mentioned techniques. While the strategies are explained, working with a professional creates a well-rounded approach to healing that will guide you toward your mental healing. 

Recovering from an injury is a long and lonely road that can get frustrating. However, you don’t have to walk down the road alone. It is important to stay connected to your team, train your brain to help you return to play, and seek support. No matter how slow the progress is, it is still progress, one day at a time. 


Bibliography

1. Arvinen-Barrow M, Walker N, Introduction to the Psychology of Sport Injuries. In: Arvinen-Barrow M. The Psychology of Sport Injury and Rehabilitation. Routledge; 2013. p. 2- 6.

2. Brinkman C, Baez SE, Genoese F, Hoch JM. Use of Goal Setting to Enhance Self-Efficacy after Sports-Related Injury: a Critically Appraised Topic. Journal of Sport Rehabilitation [Internet]. 2019;29(4):1–5. Available from: https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/jsr/29/4/article-p498.xml 

3. Evans L, Hardy L. Injury Rehabilitation: A Goal-Setting Intervention Study. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. 2002 Sep;73(3):310–9.

4. Mulder T. Motor imagery and action observation: cognitive tools for rehabilitation. Journal of Neural Transmission [Internet]. 2007 Oct 1;114(10):1265–78. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2797860/ 

5. Mohd Nor MA. The Psychological Aspects of Injury in Sport. Jurnal Teknologi. 2001 Jun 1;34(1).