Athlete knocked DOWN by injuries: advice on mindset

A lot of good comments with better advice than I could offer! I just wanted to add that during my recovery from a knee injury last year, while I was unable to run, I hung out in the monthly self-care challenge thread on the challenge sub-forum of MFP. Considering taking care of myself as a radical challenge, at a time when I wasn't up to my usual physical challenges, helped me keep my sanity and keep moving forward instead of sliding back into my old, unfit habits.

purplefizzy wrote: »

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I’d love to hear how y’all approach transitions as athletes. What keeps your head in the game? How do you get excited when facing limitations due to injury or just facing an age-related need to be more measured??

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I admit, I only have a fuzzy picture of what's going on with you. I hope you're not trying to pick up where you left off? IME, that's tempting, but waaay doesn't work.

I've never been a performance athlete like you, let's just get that out of the way. I have trained fairly seriously at times, but I was a late bloomer (mid/late 40s) and that's a different development path. I've been fairly active for around 20 years now. (I'm 66.) Athletic performance per se is not part of my core identity in the way it sounds like it maybe has been for you.

What I've found as I've aged - so far - is that I can pretty much do what I've always done or want to do, eventually, if I set my mind to it (except things limited by actual physical body limitations). (However, I don't have a past specific peak standard of performance I yearn to return to, in the way you may. At 20-something or 30-something, I wasn't an athlete.)

For me, the difference with increasing age is that generally I'm not as resilient. That means I need to be as intentional and structured as possible about load, volume, recovery, etc.

I de-train faster, so I want to avoid injury in order to avoid de-training. I regain capabilities a little slower. I need to ramp up gradually, if I do have to take a break (surgical recovery or whatever). Always, I need to plan in body-systems-specific recovery, and general fatigue recovery, in a much more conscious way.

Running a training plan used to be about scheduling workouts (in terms of mindshare). Now, if I want to actually train, it's more like I need to schedule workouts and recoveries. (They always needed to be in the plan, of course, they just didn't need to be quite so *considered*. I'm not talking a different thought process, more like a slightly different flavor . . . a little more shrewd, wily, canny, maybe?)

I think I have a conceptual advantage, in that I've been a middle-aged, overweight/obese, totally out of shape person, very physically depleted (especially right after cancer treatment). It's been quite a few years, but I do have some actual memory. I don't want to be that person again: It's just not nearly as pleasant . . . and I like pleasure. The older I get, the more I recognize how easy it could be to slide back too far in that direction. Mustn't.

The effect is that I don't really think in terms of being excited about progress as a motivation to work out (though some progress will come, with the right effort/plan). It's the swamp horror in the opposite direction, plus the pure enjoyment of what I still do, that's motivation enough to do something(s).

Another thing I think about aging specifically, is that with any luck we know ourselves better, what our strengths, preferences, skills, limitations are - not just physical things, but emotional, intellectual, and more. There's an opportunity to take advantage of our self-insights, harness those things, and game our inclinations to our own benefit, maybe.

Mostly, I'm not training training now, TBH. It's not because I can't, it's because I'm just not feeling it, in terms of where I personally want my overall life balance. I'm still active, I still care about technical improvement in my sport and work at it (that's part of what "keeps my head in the game" because it's part of what makes it fun). But I'm not "training" (like running any kind of structured, periodized plan that sharpens for the Michigan Games/Michigan Club Invitational or Masters Nationals or whatever).

As I said before (upthread), helping others - new participants - come along in my sport is also a positive for me to keep going, and (when I have the chance) helping inactive others my age discover that in many cases, it's our own or others' low expectations that limit us, more than we're limited by true physical inability.

You may be - I dunno - at the point where you (recently/now/soon) shift from being "an athlete" to "an age group athlete". I don't have any experience with that. I've only ever been "an age group athlete". No comment at all on that transition.

Hoping you can find your way through the transition you need, to the right overall happy life balance for you.

P.S. I think there are quite a few athletes here on MFP who'd have good perspectives on working through rehabs, life phases, transitions. What I don't know is whether they'll react to this particular thread title.