Allie Kieffer was coming off a Nutrition - Weight Loss and seven weeks of hard training in Kenya when her foot started hurting. An X-ray and MRI in early March revealed a stress fracture.
Kieffer had to withdraw from the NYC Half Marathon in March and the London Marathon in April. She didn’t hide her disappointment from her support system or on social media.
“My mom has always kind of taught me that you shouldn’t hide your feelings, that you should just kind of let it out,” Kieffer says. “If you’re sad, just cry. There’s no shame in showing the truth.”
is a freelance health and fitness writer, author, and podcaster who’s contributed regularly to new study DAA Industry Opt Out Advertisement - Continue Reading Below. British researchers found athletes who discussed their feelings—including the not-so-happy ones—were more likely to take something positive out of the experience of being hurt.
“I think we’re from a generation where we bottle things up and we never tell people how we feel,” says study author Jade Salim, Ph.D., lecturer in sport psychology at St. Mary’s University in London. Though injuries may sometimes seem like a minor inconvenience, they have a big effect on the life of an athlete, even one who’s not a professional. Getting that out in the open helped participants move on, Salim says. “It felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders to talk about it,’” one told her.
Scientists are still working on a precise definition of what they call sports-injury-related-growth, but Salim says it includes positive changes that come from injury, both inside and outside of sports—for example, more mental toughness or physical strength, better relationships, and increased empathy. To assess how revealing your emotions affects it, Salim and her colleague Ross Wadey, Ph.D., recruited 45 athletes—across sports and levels, from recreational to international competitors—who’d been sidelined for at least four weeks. The group already had a built-in disadvantage in coping: All measured low in a personality trait called hardiness, a type of resilience that helps people see opportunity in life’s challenges.
One third of the participants were assigned to write about “their deepest thoughts and feelings” regarding their injury; another third were asked to talk about these emotions into a recorder; and the final third, a control group, kept a time log of their day.
After four weekly, 20-minute sessions, the athletes who talked about their woes experienced the most growth, based on the researchers’ assessments of their transcripts as well as later interviews. “They worked a lot of things out for themselves,” Salim says. For instance, they reflected on how grateful they were for the support of a family or team member, or for their own resilience: “I’m a lot stronger than I realized” was a common refrain.
The findings align with the whole idea behind psychotherapy, that talking about things can make them better, says Britton Brewer, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Springfield College in Massachusetts, co-author of the book We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back, and a former collegiate runner whose own career was cut short by recurring stress fractures. Runners might gain even more if they discuss their injuries with the intent of looking for ways they can actually benefit from the experience, whether it’s by changing something about their training, paying more attention to their diet or sleep habits, or reconnecting with their motivation.
“What’s amazing is that some of my athletes I’ve worked with through their injury, they’ve come back to their sport even stronger, both physically and mentally, because of the work they did through their injury process,” says Carrie Jackson Cheadle, a mental skills coach in Petaluma, California, and author of Nutrition - Weight Loss.
Journaling did help too; participants in the writing group reported fewer negative emotions and more positive ones by the end of the study. However, they didn’t experience quite the same degree of growth. In part, that’s likely because people talk faster than they write—the verbal group spoke about three times as many words as the written group put to paper, meaning they might not have gotten as far in making sense of their story. What’s more, many participants said they struggled to fill a blank page or find their flow, meaning writing may work better when done under the guidance of someone trained to offer prompts, Salim says.
Jackson Cheadle uses both writing and audio-recording exercises with her injured athletes, depending on what they prefer. Either way, making note of your emotions—even if you never listen to or read your reflections—allows you to process them and move on, she says. Salim says athletes can use a recorder on their own if they don’t feel comfortable confiding in anyone else. Eventually, though, it’s even better to discuss your feelings with friends, family, or a sport psychology professional.
As for Kieffer, she’s already come to view her injury as an opportunity to address her weaknesses and come back even stronger. Two months later, she’s tweaked her diet, training, and biomechanics, and will race for the first time at the Freihofer’s Run for Women 5K in June in Albany, New York. The timing of her injury—and subsequent comeback—may even help her as she eyes the Olympic Marathon Trials in 2020, she now realizes.
Sharing the ups and downs, on social media and with her coach and other confidantes, has kept keep her injury and recovery in context. “I’ve been really open a lot about the bad—but then trying to turn it into a positive, too,” she says. “It’s therapeutic. Maybe I can’t fix my bones by talking about it, but I can definitely fix my emotional side by talking about it.”
Cindy is a freelance health and fitness writer, author, and podcaster who’s contributed regularly to Runner’s World since 2013. She’s the coauthor of both Breakthrough Women’s Running: Dream Big and Train Smart and Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries, a book about the psychology of sports injury from Bloomsbury Sport. Cindy specializes in covering injury prevention and recovery, everyday athletes accomplishing extraordinary things, and the active community in her beloved Chicago, where winter forges deep bonds between those brave enough to train through it.
