AFM RSS Feed Follow Us on Twitter       
AMERICAN FOOTBALL MONTHLY THE #1 RESOURCE FOR FOOTBALL COACHES
ABOUT |  CONTACT |  ADVERTISE |  HELP  



   User Name    Password 
      Password Help





Article Categories


AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


ALL IN: Prevention and Psychological Treatment of Football Injuries

by: Jared M. Wood, Ph.D.
Sport Psychology Coach
© More from this issue

Click for Printer Friendly Version          

Injuries are inevitable in football and too often when injuries occur, coaches are at a loss for how to deal with it. If you pursue an ALL IN philosophy and follow the acronym ALL IN after an injury, you will prevent as many injuries as possible and skillfully handle the unavoidable injuries that do occur.

Before the Injury

Begin building an ALL IN culture before injuries occur. ALL IN means you are devoted to the whole person, not just the football player part of the person. Make sure your staff is trained on the latest player safety techniques and emergency procedures. Keep the people playing football for you as safe as possible.

Next, daily stress often plays a significant part in injury, and you should never underestimate your role in helping promote healthy living and reducing daily stress. Simply helping players laugh and smile goes a long way to reducing the effects of stress. Therefore, share a daily laugh and a smile with your team, but don’t stop there. Talk to your players. Watch them. Follow their social media. Be available. Pay attention to their strength and conditioning, and emphasize nutrition, hydration, and recovery (such as proper rest and training room rehabilitation). All of these simple steps can help reduce stress and promote healing.

Perhaps one of the most important things you can do to go ALL IN for the team is to focus on building depth, which means placing great value on all of your players. Teach players that every individual is a highly valued member of the team. Create opportunities to make backups and scout team players feel valued, and they will respond with great effort. This will help build depth and reduce injury impact on team performance.

After the Injury

After the injury, follow the ALL IN acronym to make sure you are helping the injured athlete.

Ask: Asking is a simple but necessary skill, and make no mistake, being able to ask sincerely is a skill. Ask the injured player how he is doing and what he needs. Follow up his answer by asking other questions. Be much more interested in learning about how he is doing than you are in providing a solution at the moment. 
 
Listen: After asking, work on the next skill: listening. Just listen to what the athlete says without worrying about how to answer. If you listen carefully, the answer will become apparent. And chances are that you don’t need an answer anyway. The simple act of asking and listening can help the player connect to you, and connecting with other people is helpful to healing. Further, if you truly listen carefully, you will pick up on what the player needs, and you can provide it for him. This may be as simple as providing concrete help (e.g., helping him get around school, providing rides to and from team activities, grabbing materials for class), or as complex as realizing his needs go beyond your capabilities and may require parent/family intervention or professional help.

Look: Look for signs of poor adjustment to athletic injury and make sure you know a few professionals and their contact information for when a player’s reactions to injury go beyond your capabilities and resources (such as time). Have at least one trusted professional with whom you can consult and/or refer parents and players to if you see any of the following signs of poor adjustment to injury:
•    Feelings of anger or confusion;
•      Obsession with questions about timeline for returning to play;
•      Denial over implications of injury;
•      Attempting to come back too soon;
•      Boasting about past accomplishments;
•      Dwelling on minor physical complaints;
•      Guilt over letting down the team;
•      Withdrawal from others or a change in social support group (e.g., starts hanging with non-athlete substance abusers);
•      Looking sad, flat, and/or shedding tears;
•      Statements indicating hopelessness.
 
Include: Be sure you always try to include injured players in team activities to the best of your ability. It is likely that physical therapy or training room activities will take them out of their normal schedule, and they may not be around for all of the regular activities and announcements you make to the team. Be sure you don’t forget them. A great way to make sure injured teammates are included in activities is to assign a specific coach to the task. 

Further, inclusion can apply to getting the athlete back on the field. Make sure the injured athlete keeps up on game plans, his therapy, and if appropriate, a schedule for getting him back on the field. In this vein, make sure the injured athlete is included in your motivation and encouragement. Injured athletes often experience a loss of identity due to their reduced role on the team and a lack of confidence in returning to the field. Make sure that you communicate your continued belief in the athlete’s ability to contribute to the team, even if it results in less playing time than he had before the injury.

Need: Over and above including injured athletes, make sure you still need them, and communicate just how the injured player is still needed. Teams will only have great team chemistry when everyone is on the same page and buying into team goals, and this includes injured teammates. When you show that you need injured players, you are sending a great message to the whole team: we value everyone. If you no longer need injured players, their healthy friends on the team may sense this and fear that you only value players for physical performance on the field. This is a dangerous belief for anyone from youth leagues to the pros. Athletes perform best for coaches who value them as people.

To communicate need, give the injured player a task. Let him know what you need him to do. It could be as simple as requesting his enthusiasm and encouragement, but you also might give him a task, such as tracking a statistic or watching a certain matchup on the field.

The injured player made a commitment to the team, and you need not relieve him of this commitment just because he is injured. Certainly, you should be aware of his limitations and understand that his therapy for the injury may change some of the activities he can attend, but it shouldn’t change his commitment to the team. When you hold him accountable to his commitment, he will respect you and feel honored that you still treat him as a valued member of the team.

By going ALL IN for injured players, you go all in for the team. s

About the Author: Dr. Jared Wood has been an educator for the past 19 years and a sport psychology coach for the past 14 years. He recently completed and published a sport psychology training manual for players and coaches called “It’s Only Cold On One Sideline.” Visit his website 1sideline.com to find free articles and training plans or to purchase the manual and other training materials. You can contact Dr. Wood at jaredwood@mac.com or 248-535-5358. Follow him on Twitter: @1sideline & @woodjared.







NEW BOOK!

AFM Videos Streaming Memberships Now Available Digital Download - 304 Pages of Football Forms for the Winning Coach



















HOME
MAGAZINE
SUBSCRIBE ONLINE COLUMNISTS COACHING VIDEOS


Copyright 2024, AmericanFootballMonthly.com
All Rights Reserved