How to bounce back from a sports injury

Being an athlete comes with a lot of sacrifices and blessings but one of the toughest things to overcome are injuries. Injuries don't just mean we have to take a break from the sport. They also mean a change of our daily routine, social interactions, a possible change of athletic goals, which often is accompanied by feelings of anxiety and some level of depression plus uncertainty about the future. While non-athletes in most cases know how to rest and give their body time to recover, athletes are a different breed. Often athletes do not not know how to take a break after an injury. Their brains, which are trained from a young age to ignore pain, play tricks on them by directing inner self-talk towards "I can play through this.", "It is not as bad.", "I have played through worse.". This mentality leads them to ignore the body's pain signals to stop and as a result causes more severe injuries. 

I am guilty of training and playing through certain pains and injuries myself which resulted in a dislocation of my shoulder and various ankle sprains. Yes, I am one of those crazy athletes who competed with a broken bone justifying it through the irrational thought of "my team needs me to win". But, now being somehow wiser through experience, I appreciate this article which gives general guidelines on how to overcome injuries the healthy way. I wish I had more coaches, counselors, therapists, etc. who had taught me a balance between pushing oneself and listening to my body's signals. 

Parenting and Sports: The worst kid on the team

When people become parents we often have high hopes for our children especially if they start participating and maybe even competing in a sport. We often know that there will be moments when our kid does not want to practice, does not get a long with the coach or a teammate. We also know that performances in sports may vary depending on the day and that these times usually pass. Often we want to encourage our children to practice harder and even spend money on private coaching lessons and other performance enhancing methods. Therefore, it hits hard when our children decide that they don't want to play the sport anymore. This article does an excellent job explaining the challenges of parenting in sports and what to consider when the own child is the worst kid on the team.