Competitive sports carry a high risk of injury. This was also observed at the Winter Olympics. At a recent network meeting in Cologne, the question was: How can sports psychology prevent injuries or support athletes in their return to sport?
World-class gymnast Elisabeth Seitz has had five foot operations alone. In addition, a torn Achilles tendon required surgery and various injuries to his back and shoulder. “You have to push through injuries” I learned it in the gym as a child. Only later did she realize that something was going wrong, “When you’re actually in pain and yet you’re doing a floor exercise”.
Injuries in competitive sports are accepted as an occupational risk. Former judoka and Olympian Christophe Lambert underwent ten operations on his knee and shoulder. His brother Maxime, also a former judoka and member of the national team, has 16 operations.
Olympic start despite cruciate ligament tear: “We can’t celebrate that”
Athletes demand extremes from their bodies. The most recent example: US ski professional Lindsey Vonn. Her start at the Olympic Games in Milan-Cortina despite a torn cruciate ligament and the subsequent fatal fall on the downhill were also the topic of the “Injury and Psyche” event organized by the “Mentally Strengthened” network and the Sports Psychology Working Group in Cologne.
For the renowned sports psychologist Lothar Linz, Vonn is not concerned with the question of whether a long-standing, extremely experienced athlete should have been allowed to compete with an injury. He thinks in a different direction: “I don’t think she’s a good role model. I think it’s important that we say: Yes, she’s free to do that and, if she wins, we totally recognize the achievement, but it’s not something I find admirable. We can’t celebrate that. We can’t reinforce that, that’s the important thing.”
Linz has provided psychological support to many top athletes on their way to world championship titles and Olympic medals. With stories like Lindsey Vonn’s, he worries about the impact on young athletes: “I don’t want young athletes to experience that it’s cool, it’s good if I take risks like that and treat my body like that. A 16-year-old or a 20-year-old athlete should think very carefully about whether this is the right path, because the consequences can be very serious.“That would have been true for Linz even without the serious fall.
Psychological problems cause and consequence of injuries
Sports psychology operates within a system of pressure to succeed and the athletes’ physical and mental health. Research assumes that five to ten percent of injuries in competitive sports are caused by psychological problems.
On the other hand, it is also injuries that lead to psychological problems in athletes. They are torn out of their identity and self-definition and have to realize: the body is vulnerable. The result: depressive moods, fear of loss of status, fear of being injured again.
This is where, among other things, sports psychology can provide support. Together with the injured, trust techniques could be developed and the feeling of fear could be redirected into a feeling of strength, explains Jens Kleinert, head of the sports psychology institute at the Cologne Sports University. And when it comes to returning to sport, the following applies: “The athlete is only fit when he feels fit and not when the doctor or physiotherapist decides that.”
Depending on the culture of the sport
However, support from sports psychology is not always desired and depends on the sport, explains ex-judoka and doctor Christophe Lambert. He runs an orthopedics practice with his brother and looks after the German national judo team. He knows coaches who are convinced that sports psychology is for wimps.
“And if the national coach says I don’t need that, then it won’t be done.”Lambert describes his experience with the power of national coaches. Athletes would not be asked here. Sports psychologist Lothar Linz confirms that not much has changed in certain sports to this day: “Dealing with injuries depends on the culture of the sport”.
Elisabeth Seitz describes her experiences as having trained for years in a culture in which no one looked beyond the gym: “Then you’re in this one Bubbleswhich is very small and you either trust the bubble and go along with it or you just have to get out of the system completely, but you don’t want that.”
“Then you’re just in this bubble”: Gymnast Elisabeth Seitz on the uneven bars in 2023
Different expertise and open exchange
For Elisabeth Seitz, overtraining is the reason for her numerous foot injuries and five surgeries as a young gymnast. Child protection not an issue: “Back then, people thought a lot helped a lot”. No consideration was given to pain and their parents were systematically excluded from the system. For the future, Seitz would like to see a team in which different areas of expertise come together and exchange ideas openly. Ideally with independent sports psychology support.
There is agreement here from the participants in the room – both from sports psychologists and from the two doctors. The Lambert brothers advocate intensive collaboration between medicine, sports psychology, physiotherapy and training staff with athletes. When injuries occur, they need to be talked to and not about them. “You always go first”says Christophe Lambert, “We want to do the best for them – no matter what professional group we are.”
And when an athlete like Lindsey Vonn decides for herself that she wants to risk competing in the Olympics despite an injury, Lothar Linz sees the challenge in how he discusses this decision with the athletes he looks after. “I wouldn’t tell a 20-year-old in general: You’re not allowed to do that, it’s not possible or something like that. But I certainly wouldn’t go into the consultation and say: You, the gold medal is everything and do everything for it, but it has to be very carefully considered.”
