The Athlete Development Journal🥇

Train your mind. Build your body. Fuel your soul.

Listen to this episode in the car with your athlete. ⬇️

You can also listen on ​Spotify​ or ​Apple Podcasts​.

Mind. The ugliest trait known to mankind.

A few years ago, I was doing a career-planning meeting with one of my interns. It went something like this:

• “My high school coach didn’t help me with recruiting, so I didn’t have the offers that I should have.”
• “My advisor gave me bad advice about when I should take that class, so I got off track and had to change my major.”
• “My bio professor didn’t like me, so he gave me a bad grade and I would have had to retake the class.”
• “My college coach was playing favorites, so I left the team.”

I had no choice but to stop the meeting and address the disease in the room. He had a serious case of “victim mindset.”

No one should be more in control of your recruiting process than you.

No one should know more about what classes you need to take, when you need to take them, and what your academic future will look like more than you.

No professor is truly out with a vengeance to fail a single student. If they are, it’s you who is responsible for turning on some charisma and making them like you.

The same goes for your coach.

I handed him the book “Extreme Ownership” and implored him to read it.

You are the leader of your own life.

As the leader you are fully responsible for all aspects of your performance, whether successful or not. There are no excuses and no one else to blame.

If you currently feel like the world is out to get you, I beg you: stop making excuses and start solving problems.

Body. Five things you can do to heal faster and better.

Last week we talked about the miraculous stuff that happens automatically inside your body after you get hurt.

While the bulk of the healing process is taken care of without you thinking about it, you can set the stage to get better outcomes.

Here’s what you can do:

1. Protect the injured site
2. Manage pain
3. Manage swelling
4. Move often
5. Get parasympathetic

1) Protect the injured site

This could alternatively be titled, “don’t do something stupid.”

Avoid falling down. Keep the area clean to prevent infections. Don’t let people bump into you.

There aren’t many situations that I think wearing a brace has a truly physical benefit. However, I encourage wearing something in the early stages of injury just as a signal to the outside world to stay away and be careful around you.

2) Manage pain

Pain is a helpful signal to let us know that something’s wrong and prevent us from trying something stupid too early in the healing process (see above).

However, too much pain can be just unnecessarily unpleasant. It could also prevent us from going through an appropriate amount of early movement (see a couple of sections below).

Do what you need to do to keep your pain at a manageable level.

Ice is a hot topic (pun intended) in this realm. I wrote about it extensively ​here​.

The short version: icing to reduce pain isn’t a big deal. It’s not going to help you recover faster, but it’s not going to slow down your recovery either. If it feels good, go for it!

Pharmacologic recommendations are outside of my scope, but there is a growing consensus to avoid anti-inflammatory medications in the first 72 hours after an injury to prevent disrupting the inflammation benefits we talked about last week. That includes NSAIDs (aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen, etc.).

Some would suggest that acetaminophen is a suitable alternative. It effectively relieves pain without interfering with the inflammatory process.

Other pain reduction modalities may include things like e-stim (TENS units), light massage, and compression.

3) Manage swelling

Swelling serves a purpose (see the inflammation section from last week). But, again, too much swelling is a bad thing.

If swelling gets out of control, it reduces range of motion and alters the ability for the muscle to contract.

When you’re active and moving around, the muscles do a great job of pumping the extra fluid around. When you’re sedentary, however, all that swelling just pools in the area.

So, I recommend you wear a compression sleeve or wrap during the school day, overnight while you sleep, and any other time that you’re just hanging out doing nothing.

4) Move often

This is where most people go wrong. Rest seems like the logical thing to do after an injury. But, again, too much rest is a bad thing.

The earlier you can load it in a tolerable range, the quicker the healing process is.

So, if you sprained your ankle or pulled your hamstring, don’t go crutching around all day everyday. Walk on it.

A general rule I give is to tolerate pain up to around a 4 or 5 out of 10 (with 0 being no pain whatsoever and 10 being you’d rather them cut your leg off right now than feel this anymore).

Walk around on it until it gets up to that range, then give it some rest to let the pain simmer back down, then start walking on it again.

5) Get parasympathetic

You might not be able to control all those automatic processes that we talked about last week, but you can help your body dedicate more resources to them.

Everything that happens inside your body that is not under your volitional control is part of your autonomic nervous system.

Your autonomic nervous system has two subdivisions: sympathetic and parasympathetic.

When you’re stressed and active, you’re tapped into your sympathetic nervous system. That’s our “fight and flight” system. It dumps adrenaline into your blood stream, shuts down digestion, and ramps up your heart rate.

That’s great for running away from a lion or jumping absurdly high for a block on game day, but it’s no bueno for healing after an injury.

When you’re relaxed and zen, you’re tapped into your parasympathetic nervous system. That’s our “rest and digest” system. It slows your heart rate and ramps up digestion.

That’s what we need if we’re going to break down our food into the nutrients we need and deliver them to the injured area.

The best way to dial down your sympathetic nervous system and dial up your parasympathetic nervous system is to just relax. Find something that you enjoy doing, turn your brain off, and let all the stress go.

Soul. One question to figure out the rest of your life.

We only get one shot at this this thing called life and I feel incredibly blessed to wake up every day and spend it doing something that I love. I wish that for more people.

To figure out what that is for you, consider this question from Naval Ravikant:

What feels like play to you, but looks like work to others?

It’s a good sign if people are coming up to you and saying, “I don’t know how you spend so much time doing ______, that’s so boring to me.”

That means you’ve likely identified an area of interest, passion, and natural giftedness that is specific to you.

If you are genuinely interested in something, you’ll pursue it longer and harder than other people. If you pursue it longer and harder than other people, you’ll develop unique expertise. If you develop unique expertise, you can be paid to do work and solve problems that you’re uniquely qualified to solve.

For me, there were some early indicators of what I should be doing. I loved reading anatomy, biomechanics, and training textbooks. I always found myself pushing people to do more (which makes me a pretty annoying friend and family member).

I found a way to combine those two things and have a career that I love.

You might not have any answers to that question right now, but keep your ears perked over the next several weeks. You’ll be surprised how some of your favorite things are quite nauseating to others.

Last week’s podcast AMA ⬇️

Kobe’s Secret, “Bambi Mode,” Osgood-Schlatter’s, and Why I’m Ditching My iPhone

You can also listen on ​Spotify​ or ​Apple Podcasts​.

IN THIS EPISODE:

00:47 – Why I’m Ditching My iPhone for a Light Phone

12:45 – I Grew 5 Inches and Feel Uncoordinated. What Exercises Can Help?

16:49 – The Full Kobe Bryant Story: Mastering the Fundamentals

21:04 – What Are the Top 5 Lifts for Runners?

23:35 – A Simple Workout for a 10 y/o Soccer Player and 13 y/o Gymnast

29:17 – Can I Play Basketball with Osgood-Schlatter’s Knee Pain?

35:14 – Common Mistakes Thinner Athletes Make When Trying to Bulk Up

38:35 – If the Furnace Is Hot Enough, Does It Matter What You Eat?

42:39 – How the Gym Builds Resilience for Athletes Who Sit the Bench

We’re recording another “Ask Me Anything” episode next week. If you have any athlete development, sports performance, rehab, or life questions for me, send them ​here!​ (Or just email me back if you find that easier.)

A couple important things…

1. This newsletter is completely free. I spend many hours each week researching, writing, and illustrating. The best way you can support it and allow it to continue is to share it with people you know. You can just send them to ​gtperformance.co/newsletter​ and they can subscribe there!
2. Everything in these newsletters and on our website is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice for you or your athlete. Consult directly with a healthcare professional.

Thanks so much for your help in spreading the word about athlete development!

Be >,

Zach

Dr. Zach Guiser, PT, DPT, CSCS