Carrie Cheadle is a sports psychologist & co-author of the book 'Rebound: Train your brain to bounce back stronger from sports injuries'. Every runner needs to recognise the importance of behaviour, attitudes and mindset for recovery. It is also important to self-reflect on your personality and use your strengths and weaknesses as a great ally, rather than a hindrance. We cover all these topics and include strategies to help these common running personalities: The impatient runner The fearful runner The stubborn runner The victimized runner The repeat offender Find more about Carrie, her book, her podcast, FB group through the links below: https://www.carriecheadle.com/ https://injuredathletesclub.com/about-the-book/ To follow the podcast joint the facebook group Becoming a smarter runner click on the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/833137020455347/?ref=group_header To find Brodie on instagram head to: https://www.instagram.com/brodie.sharpe/ To work with Brodie Sharpe at The Running Breakthrough Clinic visit: https://breakthroughrunning.physio/
Expand your running knowledge, identify running misconceptions and become a faster, healthier, SMARTER runner. Let Brodie Sharpe become your new running guide as he teaches you powerful injury insights from his many years as a physiotherapist while also interviewing the best running gurus in the world. This is ideal for injured runners & runners looking for injury prevention and elevated performance. So, take full advantage by starting at season 1 where Brodie teaches you THE TOP PRINCIPLES TO OVERCOME ANY RUNNING INJURY and let’s begin your run smarter journey.
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On today's episode, train your mind to bounce back from injuries with Carrie Cheetal. Welcome to the Run Smarter podcast, the podcast helping you overcome your current and future running injuries by educating and transforming you into a healthier, stronger and smarter runner. My name is Brodie Sharp. I am the guy to reach out to when you finally decided enough is enough with your persistent running injuries. I am a physiotherapist. the owner of the Breakthrough Running Clinic and your podcast host. I'm excited to bring you today's lesson and to add to your ever-growing running knowledge. Let's work together to overcome your running injuries, getting you to that starting line and finishing strong. So let's take it away. I am so pumped about this online course I'm about to launch. It has, let me pull up the website so I can tell you the content that I have on there so far. So at the moment I have the top 10 principles to overcome any running injury with a visual format and going into a little bit more depth than the podcast. We've got a tendinopathy series, we have a running retraining and gait analysis module. We have things to do with running shoes, so characteristics, talking about the minimalist index, what foot shape and orthotics have for running performance injury. We've got a module on returning to running, the steps you need to take when you are injured to return to running, strength and conditioning, pain explained, we have stress and sleep for runners and then we're diving into some injury specific modules. So we have patellofemoral pain, we have ITB friction syndrome. I'm just working on right now in the middle of working on Achilles module and then over the next week or so we're going to be building. shin splints and plantar fasciitis and those will be enough content that I need before launching the course and then as people are enjoying the course and going through that content I will be producing more and more content and you can follow along and I have a whole list of modules that I want to bring out and put onto the course. but can't do it all at once. We need people to jump in and see what, let me know what they think and need some feedback before I start adding more and more content. But it's a super, super resource and I'm really excited to be delivering it to you. People are showing their excitement already. And if you like this podcast, if you like this content, if you like the way it's delivered, and if you like me or you like my expertise, this course is gonna be like the podcast on steroids. and we have like video elements, we have it all in text, we have the audio version of it if you wanna listen to it like a podcast, and it's just really cool graphics and more in depth than we can do with the podcast with it only being like the audio version. I can just deliver a lot more in depth if there's a visual component to it. And so there is... the ability to do deep dives into things like tendinopathies. If you like that kind of thing, we look at research and studies, that kind of aspect, but there also will be a bit more of a condensed version. If you are a runner who doesn't like diving into the science or the little nitty gritties, there'll be a surface or superficial level of content there for you as well. So yeah, stay tuned. I will be releasing. on here and also on my social media any early bird specials which I'm not sure when I'll release the early bird specials just stay tuned stay tuned on here stay tuned on social media and I'll let you know exactly when because this process is moving a lot quicker than I expected and yeah I want you to be the first to hear these deals and hear the early bird specials Um, because you are my number one client, you're the one that listens to the podcast. You're the one that wants to learn more about the running injuries or learn more about how to perform, how to train smarter. And so I want to reward you and thank you for following the podcast and following me on social media first with those discounts. Today's podcast has Carrie Cheadle on. She has, she is co-authoring the book, uh, rebound, which I have read through and it's just a wealth of knowledge, really practical takeaways, as well as theoretical side of psychology and how your attitudes, your behaviors, your coping strategies can facilitate and also hinder your recovery process. Carrie has studied psychology and mental training. She has a master's in sports psychology and she's teamed up with Cindy who is Like I said, co-authoring the book and she'll talk about that in a second. It was so good to have Carrie on. She is a delight. She is full of energy and loves talking about these topics and we cover so much in today's episode. I just got off the interview with her and just thought to myself, this is jam packed full of so much useful information. There's no fluffy stuff. And it's those action packed episodes that I really, really enjoy because I want to give you the best value possible. So without further ado, let's take it away with Carrie Cheadle. Carrie, thanks for coming on. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you and thank you very, very much for taking the time. I purchased your book probably about a year ago and it's just so unique and it's exactly what every runner needs to read. And so can we just start off by talking about how you teamed up with Cindy and what the ideas were like around the book and how that sort of came to fruition? Yeah. So the book came about. It had been... something that I had been kicking around for a while. So I wrote my first book on top of your game and there was a nice big break in there where I finally recovered enough from that project to be to be ready to write another book and And I you know going through a lot of different injuries myself and working with a lot of injured athletes I did you know, I worked with quite a few cyclists And so when you're a cyclist, you know a lot of those athletes that I was working with I was helping them come back and regain confidence after a bike crash and getting back in the Peloton. And so, and then also doing some different support groups like for collegiate athletes that were injured. And so it was through both of those for me personally, my own personal injury experiences and then working with people that I realized, oh man, like at a time when you need the most support, oftentimes you're getting the least. And I think I might want this to be my next book. And so I kind of had that idea. Around that same time Cindy had reached out to me as of you know, so she's a freelance journalist And she was doing a couple different articles around this idea of injury And it was something she's also really passionate about so she just ended up reaching out to me as an expert in the field And interviewed me for a couple different articles and then I put out a very cryptic post on my social media page on my facebook, um mental skills training for athletes page and And she's on there. And I said something about getting excited for Manix project. I was going on a sabbatical to spend some time in North Carolina and Georgia to take a few weeks off and start working on this project. And she's like, hey, sounds really exciting. We should catch up. So she knew, she had a feeling that maybe it was a book about injury. And so we connected. And she, through that conversation, she's like, so have you ever thought about having a co-author on the book? And I was like, huh. And the thought never even crossed my mind. I don't know why, like I just like whenever, maybe it's because my experience with the first book, it was just an individual endeavor. And so she said that and I was like, no, but this is interesting, keep talking. So we had never met in person before and we ended up deciding to have her come out for a week to my sabbatical to the place I was staying in North Carolina and we decided, all right, let's work together for a week on this idea that I was already going out there to kind of. outline the book and she's like, how about we work together for a week? And we decide if it's a good fit and if, um, we work well together, we'll go for it. And if not, you have your outline. And I was like, all right, let's do it. So the first time we met was in, uh, we stayed together for a week in North Carolina. Wow. So cool to go through that process and actually have two very different backgrounds of like psychology and journalism and just to put a psychological book together is just like the perfect combination. Yeah, it was a great marriage. Like I'm so glad it is definitely a better book because of collaborating together, because she really did a great job of weaving in the athlete stories and that narrative and sort of bringing things to light in terms of like the subject matter, you know, helping the reader see it come to light in the stories. And so she, it was, it was a great combination. And I heard you on a another podcast talk about you dealing with a couple of knee injuries and like with your background in psychology, you chose to, even though there were two different knee injuries, you, your approach to handling those two different injuries, um, you decided to put theory into practice and came out with totally different results in terms of your recovery. Can you maybe just talk about that for a sec? Yeah. So my first knee injury, so I, I tore my meniscus in my left knee and had some other, and it was kind of an overuse injury. So it wasn't an acute injury. I'm not even sure when it started. I'm gonna have a sense of it, but it was, it developed over time to the point where I couldn't use my knee the way I wanted to. And there was some other stuff. So I got arthroscopic surgery and got that cleaned up. And this was in the late 90s when this happened. And I was, my main sports at that point were, I was big into rock climbing and I'm, was also a snowboarder and I still snowboard. I don't rock climb anymore, but So I noticed coming back. I struggled. I struggled in a few different ways with that injury It was my first major injury. Um, so it was the first, you know, it was my first surgery So I you know, there was a lot there was a learning curve there with being injured and then um, I had I had no tools for dealing with the pain for the rehabilitation, so I really struggled with pain management and then um, I really struggled with regaining confidence in my knee, coming back into climbing in particular, and snowboarding, but really climbing, and trusting that knee, so I just struggled. And then fast forward, I ended up going to get my master's in sports psychology, and just so happened to be, I think it was about a year into the program, when I injured my left knee again, different injury. This time it was just kind of a total freak snowboarding accident, and I tore my MCL. And almost immediately I decided, uh, okay, I'm going to apply everything that I'm learning to my recovery process and see, and see how that feels to do that. So I took everything I was learning about sports psychology and instead of, you know, applying all these things to performance, I applied it to recovering from my injury. And that was now my performance. That was now my sport was to come back from that. And oh my God, profound difference. in those two injuries and in terms of my feelings of motivation and confidence in my recovery, it was shockingly different with using those tools. And so that was a, it was pretty eye-opening for me recognizing, oh yeah, not only is there a huge place for mental training in injury recovery, but everybody needs to have this information. It took me a while to finally get from that point to the book, but I'm so glad that I did because it's been pretty well received and people, I mean, any injured athlete will tell you. It, the recovery is just as much mental as it is physical, but people have all kinds of support for the physical and not so much for the mental. So I, it just was, um, I, I know it to be true not only because of the research, but because I did it and it was so profound. It just, it was really mind blowing. Unreal. Can you maybe just give one example of one thing that you implemented that second time around, uh, when the, when it comes to that, like mind training that you mentioned. that you didn't implement in the first recovery? Yeah, there's a few. But one big difference was during the rehabilitation process, I had very specific goals. And I was very tuned into thinking about the things that I could do and not worrying about the things I couldn't do and getting very specific with the idea that I talk about in the book is, OK, so now my recovery is now my sport. And all of the energy and effort I training and doing my sports of rock climbing and snowboarding, now recovery is my sport. All that energy has to go into that. My mindset shift of that's the most important thing now and that's my performance is coming back from this a better athlete than before, which I 100% did. I had the best season ever. That next snowboarding season was phenomenal. Being very specific about adjusting my goals and having a very clear... plan, like goal plan mapped out was a big piece. And then working on my, a lot on my internal dialogue and my, and also visualization around regaining confidence in that part of my body was another thing that I did that was much, much different than the time before. So any athletes that have been injured will identify with this, like, if you think about your injury. Oftentimes we talk about it, like the way that we talk about that part of our body is like, oh, that's my bad knee versus my good knee. And so, and so I say that to people and they're like, oh yeah, totally. I do that. Like, oh, it's my bad. That's my bad shoulder. That's my bad, whatever. And so really even thinking about connecting differently with that part of my body where that was no longer like my bat and especially being injured in that same knee twice, it's really easy to Um, to fall into that mindset of like, oh my God, that's my bad knee. Everything bad happens to that side of my body. Like, um, so shifting that entirely and shifting how I relate to that part of my body, because when you're, when you've been injured, you're so hyper focused and so hyper aware of any sensation in that part of your body, that it's, it becomes a trigger in a way that like can trigger stress and anxiety. So I knew, okay, I need to. That needs to shift for me to be able to trust my me in a way that I wasn't able to the first time around. Yeah. You've touched on a lot of points there. And, uh, earlier in this podcast, I actually did a mini series on pain science and winding up the brain and using the brain as a good tool for recovery. And what you're talking about there exactly illustrates that. And when you're convincing yourself, okay, that's your bad knee. That's also feed falling to the brain. And when you want to return back to a sport, say like snowboarding and the brain says, you want to do what to your bad knee, like exactly. It's not going to handle that. That's your bad knee. And if you keep eating, yeah, that's crazy. And that in itself, just telling yourself that is going to, uh, trigger the brain to be like, no, we need to protect this area. Let's say, let's send pain signals to let you know that that's a bad idea. And, and it just, um, yeah, obviously that's going to be very, um, hindering for recovery. Yeah, it's amazing. Our brains are so beautifully wired to protect us, but sometimes when it comes to recovery, the ways that your brain does that actually ends up hindering you versus helping you. Yeah, that's cool. It's great that it touches on those points and it like describing the book as well, and even the little tagline just to train your brain to bounce back stronger from sports injuries. It's. so nicely profound and I thought we would structure this interview a little bit differently because the book illustrates the importance of like attitude and mindset for recovery and I thought about a couple of the clients and a couple of my own personality traits that I have when I'm injured and come up with a couple of categories for different runners and different attitudes and mindsets that people do find themselves in when they are injured. And thought we could go through a couple of strategies to help those sort of categories, if that's all right with you. And, um, so the first one and the coping strategies and attitudes that people have, the first one that came to my mind was the impatient runner, the one who is injured and is very frustrated because they love running, they want to get back to running and find themselves jumping into too much too quickly because that's, they just want to get back so bad. Um, I think a lot of runners can relate to this type of attitude and coping strategies. So what can we talk about to help them? Yeah. So for the impatient runner, I love that. There's a few different things that might be going on in that situation. Sometimes with the impatient runner, what's happening is we'll go through, oftentimes when you're injured, athletes will go through a grieving process. Not all athletes, but a lot of athletes will. go through something that's similar to the stages of grief. And so the first stage is denial, where it's like, oh my God, please don't let this be happening. This isn't happening. I'm sure it's fine. And then you go into a process of feeling anger. And then after that is bargaining. So bargaining is kind of what happens sometimes with the inpatient runner, where you sort of get to this place of like, okay, enough is enough. I'm sure if I take two more days off, I'll be fine. Like, so you kind of bargain with yourself around this idea of like, um, when you'll be okay to go back. And the reason we might get impatient, there's a few different reasons. One is your running is part, it's part of who you are and it's part of how you structure your life and your world. And it's your, it's your way to be in your body and that's how you relate to the world. It's part of your social support network for a lot of people. It's your stress management. So it provides all these different roles and it's something that's meaningful to you. So it makes sense that you're feeling like, I'm done. I'm done with being injured. Let's get back to this. And part of that impatience too is fear around like, oh my God, what if I can't get back to this? So it's almost as like we try to push against that by jumping back in too soon because the thought of not doing it is so terrifying that you just, you can't even look at that. and taking a day off or making this longer, it's almost like this emotional, psychological way of accepting that you're looking at that. So it's really interesting. So the impatience, depending on the athlete, it might come from a different place. But one of the biggest things you can do for yourself, if you're the impatient runner, is readjusting your goals, is really thinking about like, okay, so what's my body telling me? And what does that mean I need to do in terms of my training decisions this week and I need to adjust my goals. So that's your ability to work on your mental fitness and use your resilience by like how quickly can I accept the situation in front of me and adjust? Because if you don't, then you're running the risk of prolonging the injury. It's really hard to wrap your head around that though as a patient runner because all you wanna do is get back. The other thing to know too that I tell athletes that they really resonate with is you're never going to get back as soon as you want to because you don't want to be injured in the first place. So you really have to work on being patient and recognizing, oh, you're right. There's no timeline that's going to be acceptable to me because I don't want to have to do this in the first place. So I just need to settle in and accept this is happening because once you accept it, then you can. do something about it and recognize, okay, this is where I am. What do I need to do right now? Yeah. There's a few things I want to touch on there. So when you're talking about the impatient runner having their, um, like their social support wrapped around what they have and a lot of that, uh, relates to like their identity. And I know the book touches on this as well. They identify themselves as a runner and every time they're not running, that is separating themselves from what. the identity that they are. And so then they find themselves impatiently going back to running and recognizing that you identify yourself as a runner and now a recovering runner that needs to revolve around rehab is one step. And the other thing when you're talking about the goals is along with writing down those goals is writing down timeframes and recognizing that it will take time. And if you write it down and put it down on paper, then you have that structure to follow. But you also, um, can respect the, the importance of those timeframes. And if you write down on paper, what you want to happen, you can read it and be like, okay, that looks very unrealistic to, you know, go from not being able to run one K to running, you know, 10 Ks within two weeks, that's looks quite unrealistic, but if that isn't mapped out and put down on paper, you won't be able to see that and you'll find yourself, you know, jumping into too much too quickly. So yeah, really cool. Yeah. I think too, creating space in there. I think a lot of times our expectation is like that it should be a perfect sort of upward trajectory. Like then if you, for the impatient runner, if you're like, okay, fine, I accept this and I'm ready to do this. And now my recovery should be in this beautiful straight linear upward line that just gets me back to my sport. And that's not how it works. So recognizing too, that when you have that mapped out, that there's space in there for, there's ups and downs in that. And that's a normal part of that process and not, and to not feel like when you hit one of those down spirals, that means you're going backwards. Um, cause it's really hard to wrap your head around that where you feel like, no, I, please don't let me lose my gains. Like so many injured athletes, that that's how they feel is like when they have a setback, they're like, please don't let me go backwards. But really it's just, that's a normal part of the injury recovery process. Yeah. If you lay down those expectations from the get-go and you expect a few little hiccups here and there, then you're dealing with that scenario. Um, and a better mindset. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. The next category that I had written down for someone who has a particular attitude that, uh, I guess hinders their recovery is the fearful runner, which is either the fear of re-injury. or the fear of like, when I come back, I'm going to have decreased performance and let down my team. And I think mainly for this podcast, a lot of the listeners are recreational runners. So I think the fear of re-injury is a lot more relatable than the performance side of things, but I do see a lot of clients that have a, a really severe injury and they really don't want to flare it up. And so they're almost over cautious when returning back to running. So what can we do to help those? Yeah, and that part of that goes back to like the way our brains wired and that we're very much wired to protect our body, right? So anytime your brain picks up on something in your environment that is similar to the circumstances of maybe when you were injured or it's just, it's almost like when you see a dog or an animal that sort of suddenly perks up its ears, that it's like something's happening here and they need to pay attention. That's sort of what happens. in our brains when you're injured and you're coming back and it's picked up on something that's like, I don't know if you should do this. It perks your ears up. And so for some of us, that is almost an overdrive in a way where you become overly cautious because of that fear of re-injury. Your protective mechanism is an overdrive. And sometimes you just need some reassurance. So one of the things I'll tell athletes like... it's okay for you to ask like your physical therapist or whoever your healthcare provider is to ask some very specific questions about, so can you tell me where my body's at now and why you feel like it's ready for this? Like it's okay if you need reassurance from your healthcare provider around that. Or, you know, it's also okay if you need to ramp up a little bit more slowly than somebody else. But no. You know if that's something that you need for your mental recovery because what happens sometimes is you're physically recovered before you're mentally recovered So before your confidence has had a chance to recover and for some people There's a deliberate process that needs to happen there where you need to you know And that's a lot of the tools in the book and rebound help can help with that like idea of resiliency and how do I? Gain confidence as my body is healing so that those two things can happen maybe coincide with each other instead of one lagging behind the other. So you know, it's so part of that fear of re-injury is that protective mechanism and you might need some reassurance. I can't tell you how many, so the last injury I had was a shoulder injury and you can't be afraid to ask the same question over two. Because I'm sure my physical therapist was a tiny bit. a tiny bit exasperated with me asking the same question, but something would happen and I would need to know again. And I, because I know that's something that I need and I'm going to feel confident, I wasn't afraid to ask like, okay, so tell me again, what exactly what's happening in my shoulder and, and why the thing I'm doing is not causing further harm. So I think that's another thing too, is that oftentimes one of the things that has to be teased out in there is what pain is normal. Okay, and what pain is causing further harm is a place that a lot of people get tripped up So when that happens as soon as people feel anything in that area They stop because it's like it's so anxiety producing that fear of re-injury But they might need some tools to manage their anxiety So that they can get through that moment as they know. Oh, no, this is okay if you feel this pain Or if you feel the pain as you do it, but then it's immediately gone. Or whatever your healthcare provider tells you about pain and what's okay and what's not. But sometimes we need tools to manage the anxiety to even get to the place where you can manage the pain then. And when you're stressed or when you're anxious, it intensifies the pain that you feel. So it's this negative feedback loop that happens. So that's a big thing in the fear of injury in that place. With the other piece, the performance piece, that part is... where sometimes I'll see people sometimes self-sabotage in a way because that idea of them not coming back, like the fear of not being the same athlete as you were before for some people is so big. And part of that, especially if you have a high athletic identity, it feels so big and so overwhelming that sometimes we'll sabotage in ways so that we don't have to ever find that out. so that you don't ever have to be faced with, oh my God, I did everything exactly as it was prescribed and it wasn't enough and I'm not the same athlete. Like the idea of facing that psychologically is too much. So that gets in your way. So then there might be work around that piece of like identity work and who else am I outside of? Like running is, it's hard for runners. It's hard for all athletes, but it's hard sometimes to hold onto this idea that running is what I do. It's not who I am. Yeah. For so many people, it is who I am. Right. Like it's, it doesn't feel that way, but it really developing some of the other areas of your identity is actually one of the greatest things you can do for your running performance. It feels counterintuitive, but it really actually is very, very beneficial for performance. I'm loving this. You're speaking my language here. When it comes to the overdrive mindset and. There's a book called Explain Pain that has this really good analogy and it's more for chronic pain, but it says like, if you have a tool shed and someone keeps stealing tools from your tool shed, you want to put some like defense mechanisms in there. So you want to maybe lock the windows and put a bolt on the door. But then sometimes if you get really paranoid and anxious, you want to put in like a motion sensor lasers and like heat sensors and like all these sort of things to like really overdrive this alarm system. And it's kind of like. And then you can just imagine like if a, if a, um, a leaf was to like fall onto the shed and then like all the alarms go off and like serving a purpose. Yeah, it's serving a purpose, but are we, uh, is it overkill a little bit? Yes. You'd say it's overkill. And a lot of times the pain signals can be very similar if you're anxious and you put your brain into overdrive. And then as soon as there's a little pain signal, all these alarms go off. Um, when it's serving a purpose, the brain's doing its job, but it might just be a little bit of overkill. And, uh, it speaks really true when you're talking about that re-injury side, things in that fear. And there is a lot of evidence around when you're returning back from injury, a little bit of pain is fine. It's actually, if you go under low levels of pain, it actually aids your recovery quicker than if you were to take it really conservative and be totally pain free because some pain is actually okay. And then if you are seeing a physio or a health professional, like you said, ask for like, get that reassurance and make sure you know. every little bit of information. You're not uncertain about anything. You don't have any like lagging questions and make sure everything's addressed so that all your concerns are addressed and therefore you have that reassurance and that's a way of calming the mind down and not going into that overdrive. Yeah it's so important to recognize that you're part of your treatment team and it's okay for you to ask questions and to have opinions and to it's a it should be a collaboration and it should be a team effort because they can't be inside your body. So they need to hear your feedback and it's okay to ask questions. I think sometimes we just think, well, they're the expert and so whatever they think I need to know, that's what they're going to tell me. But if they're going to go on their agenda, if you don't bring in an agenda, so it's really okay to ask questions. And also the fact that if you're in a consult, you're not going to remember everything and you might need to ask questions all the time. And I know I'm the type of personality, like if I go to the doctors and they just ramble off a couple of medical mumbo jumbo that I understand and they ask, do you have any questions? I'm the type of person that'll be like, um, no, I'm okay. And actually have a lot of questions that I would need addressed. So yeah, recognize it's so, so important that you have all your concerns addressed and you can ask the same question over and over if the response that you get doesn't make sense either. Yeah. Yeah, I often suggest like writing your questions down and taking a notebook because you will forget you'll absolutely forget because in the moment you're trying to process what they're giving you and especially if what they're telling you is different than the expectation you had going in your brain's doing cartwheels trying to make sense of everything and process and going oh my gosh what does this mean and then you walk away and you're like I have no idea what he or she told me so it's really like you can ask if you can record it. You could bring a friend with you or bring a notebook and take notes and it's okay to do that for yourself. Brilliant. The next one I have is the stubborn runner, which I think a lot of people can recognize within themselves and put their hand up and it's the type of runner that is injured, but will almost ignore it and continue running through that injury. And you did mention a little bit of denial phase in, um, with our first category, but I think denial is a big one for. they stubborn runners, what can we do to help these people? Yeah, it's funny. With this particular dynamic, another way to think about that idea of being stubborn. So sometimes our greatest strength is also our greatest challenge. And so for somebody that's stubborn, that might also be the thing that drives you to be really competitive and the thing that gets you to keep going because you're stubborn. I have a little bit of that. And so in some ways, my being stubborn serves me quite well. And in other ways, it is a very big hindrance. And so recognizing first that piece of like, okay, I know for myself I'm stubborn. So how is this helping me and how is this hurting me? And is there any way right now in which me being stubborn and knowing that about myself is actually hurting my recovery? Because one of the biggest things for stubborn runners to recognize or to buy into is that whole idea okay, my recovery is now my sport. And all of the energy and effort and resources I was putting into training and competing now needs to go into my recovery. And so it does a couple things. It helps you focus on the things that are in your control and put the steering wheel back in your hands, but it also helps you hold onto your athletic identity because sometimes that's the thing that's really challenging. is that like, who am I if I'm not a runner? Like I have to run, you can't tell me not to run. And so recognizing you're still an athlete, but now recovery is your sport. And so that's where your focus needs to be. And if you do that and really buy into it, you're going to help yourself not only get through this potentially as quickly as possible with your recovery. trajectory, but also potentially come back even stronger, both mentally and physically, if you use it as an opportunity. But it's a mindset shift. But that's a big piece of it, is accepting, okay, I have to accept that I'm big on language and the different language we choose. And so for me, a big one here would be, I prefer not to be injured, but I am. So what do I do now? Um, so it's like, instead of fighting it, cause we just want to fight it. The stubborn one. I mean, it's sometimes that's it. It's just like, I've been injured at times where I'm like, it's like, it feels like an affront like what? No, I'm sorry, but I don't have time for this. And I know that's my stubborn piece. And so kind of, um, not fighting it and accepting like, all right, uh, I would very much prefer not to be injured, but here I am. So what do I need to do? What's the smart thing to do today? Yeah, you raised an interesting point. And what I've wrote down here is when you're saying that stubbornness can go in both ways, it can actually help performance in certain circumstances. And stubbornness can be used as a good tool and it can be used to serve a good purpose, but it's just like directing it and self-reflection, okay, are these stubborn qualities hindering me or helping me and When it comes to performance, stubbornness can actually help. But if you redirect, if you are injured, then you can identify your stubborn qualities and put it to work for your recovery. And if you write down, or if you have a therapist who recognizes that, um, personality and writes down, okay, for you to start back at running, you need to be hopping pain-free to be able to hop pain-free. These are the exercises I need you to do. These are the exercises I need you to tick off and, um, put that to good use. rather than, um, going the other way and just being completely stubborn and running through an injury that's obviously not serving you. Um, so that could be really cool as well. Yeah. It's like that quote, you can't direct the wind, but you can't adjust the sails, right? So you're adjusting the sails so that stubbornness works for you instead of against you. Yeah. Could be a great ally. I think we can move on. I reckon we covered that very succinctly. That's awesome. The next one I had, I don't want to, um, really hurt anyone's feelings, but I do recognize that there are some people that are victimized, the victimized runner and they feel like powerless when it comes to recovery. And they are also the type of personality that blames others for why they are injured and they lack the, um, the ability to take on the responsibilities themselves and they feel very like I said, powerless. So what can we do to help this type of runner? Yeah, the thing that strikes me the most about this runner would be that sometimes what's happening is that they haven't allowed themselves to actually feel their feelings. So there's a concept I talk about in the book called go far, which is if you want to go far in your recovery. you need to feel, accept, recover. So far as that acronym for feel, accept, recover. So first things first, you have to really allow yourself to feel whatever it is that you're feeling about your injury before you can get to a place of accepting, okay, this is where I'm at, and then getting to a place of like, now what do I do about it, which is the recovery piece. And for the feeling part, we're not very good always. And again, this is kind of a... because of the way our brains are wired and the way it likes to categorize information. Sometimes with emotions, we're not always very, this is part of emotional intelligence is, can I actually, can I name the exact feeling that I'm feeling? Because a lot of times for easy access, our brain likes to categorize things. And so it's just like, I feel good, I feel bad. They just, emotions get clumped into these bigger categories. Whereas if you, you look at the one of the tools in the book is called the emotion decoder. It has just a bunch of different emotions you might be feeling when you look through that, you can kind of identify like, Oh, that's what I'm feeling. Because there's something about touching the exact feeling that lessens its power and its hold and allows you to move through it to a place of acceptance where If you don't name it and you don't bring it to the surface, you're just sort of stuck in this unease and discomfort and anger and annoyance and blame and whatever it is that you're stuck in because you haven't touched on what's the actual emotion underneath that and is it shame or is it disappointment or what is it that's under that? The other thing too that sometimes this runner might be experiencing is feeling like they're not, they don't have the support that they need. And so maybe that's the work is like, how do I work on my support system and getting the support that I need in this moment? Um, because sometimes like the, you know, blaming others or feeling powerless, those are things, those are like symptoms of not feeling like you're supported. Yeah. And I go back to what we're talking about before about making sure You have all your answers addressed as well because being a bit clueless of why you're injured or how you're injured can make you feel a bit, uh, out of control or powerless as well. And so I think one step when you're talking about support is, okay, getting the right people on your team, then asking the right questions. And that can help give you a little bit more sense of control and the emotional intelligence is a big one as well. I'm one to obviously, um, recognize within myself that uncovering attitudes and like what might be lingering in the surface when I am injured, um, can find its way of not serving me. So recognizing what sort of attitudes or what sort of emotions might be lingering and adding a label to it and identifying it can help with reassurance and recognition and, um, aid that recovery moving forward. So really good points to touch on there. Um, And so what was that? Can you say it was feel except recover? Yes. Okay. Great. And the last one that I put down was the repeat offender. And again, I'm one of these as well. Someone who does recover, finds themselves recovering quite well and they get back to pain free running, but that same injury will resurface due to possibly the same training errors or not learning from your mistakes or maybe not. getting to that 100% recovery rate, but just finding themselves with the same injury repeating over and over again and Is there anything that we can do for this type of runner to help their recovery? Yeah, that's a great question Because I know I know other people that struggle with this too and some with them Sometimes one of the things we're working on is it's not always mental Right and really getting very specific and honest with yourself about like, okay what? what are all the factors at play here and what am I doing? And am I being honest with myself about how I'm taking care of myself, um, in terms of being able to perform optimally and ask my body to do what it's doing. And so getting kind of more into that physical piece and figuring out like, am I, am I giving myself the, you know, do, am I getting the nutritional needs met? Am I giving myself the recovery time that I need in order to ask my body to do what it's doing. Do I have the strength to be able to sustain the endurance that I'm doing? You know, so whatever those physical aspects are, making sure that gets addressed in this conversation of like, it's not always mental, sometimes it's physical. Mostly it's both. But, but, but making sure that you're really being honest with yourself about that of like, okay, it's time for me to, if I want to prevent this, get more serious about figuring out what's going on. and getting whatever information or resources or support that you need in order to help figure that piece out. Because then you can figure out, once you know the cause, you can start to come up with your tools for how do I now address that so that I can prevent it in the future. And that's the other piece too, is like, am I just being reactive versus proactive about making decisions? based on what's happening with my body. Like am I waiting too late and reacting to something that's happening versus thinking through what are the training decisions, and you're doing this with your coach and you're the people that you work with, like what are the decisions I need to make to think two steps ahead instead of reacting once something's already happened? I didn't think you, like speaking to a psychologist, I thought that. we wouldn't be touching on the physical side of things as well, but you're ticking all these boxes, you're a jack of all trades. That rings really true for me as well, if someone is a repeat offender and the same injuries are happening, maybe there's something in returns of their recovery or their rehab that they're not quite ticking, they're not maybe ticking every box. And so there could be things like addressing, say, loss, like maybe a balance or appropriate reception or maybe a strength imbalance or a flexibility imbalance somewhere compared to the other side. And once someone's back to pain-free running and running at the same mileage they usually were running at, they can tick the box and say, I've back to full recovery. But it's not until you do maybe a full strength assessment that you see that you're probably 80%. recovered on one side and you're actually 20% weaker on one side and that imbalance can masquerade as full recovery, but it's actually waiting to trigger off again once you push yourself beyond your capacity. Great. That's awesome. I wasn't really expecting that answer, but you've nailed that in the head. That's awesome. The next question I have was... So there's all the five type of runners that I could identify and you've done a brilliant job at addressing all of those. The, if there's any type of other attitudes or traits that we haven't mentioned already, um, what are some traits or behaviors or coping strategies or attitudes that you have identified in some runners that can actually hinder recovery? Um, one, I would say is sometimes if one of the things that interdathletes will struggle with is we have a tendency, people will have a tendency to time travel, which means you're either thinking out into the future of like, when am I going to be able to get back? Am I going to be the same runner as I was before? Or maybe you're time traveling into the past and feeling like, oh my gosh, if I had just taken that day off, am I the one that caused this injury? So a lot of times our brain likes to time travel into the past or into the future when you know, the only place you have any influence over is bringing yourself back to this moment right now and kind of accepting there's nothing I can do about what happened. That's the past is out of my control. There's nothing I can do right now in this moment to know the future. What's happening in the future is out of my control. But what is in my control is what do I need to do right now in order to help myself right now? Because when we get hooked. We often get hooked by the things that are out of our control. And a lot of times, those things have to do with regrets of the past or worries of the future. And so really, everything you can do to kind of bring yourself back and do, OK, what can I let go of the things that are out of my control and refocus to the things that are in my control? And what can I do right now in order to help myself right now? So time traveling is one that I see people get tripped up on often. That's cool. And you did mention the word control there a lot. And I just want to reiterate that making sure that what you are, um, focusing on things that you can control. And that might be control of your strength and doing rehab. And you can't necessarily have control of how, um, many weeks until a race is due or, um, you know, that kind of timeframe and people tend to worry, which hinders recovery. And people. often worry about the things they can't control and there's no point continuously worrying about something that you can't control. Why would you do that? And can start to trigger the mind and trigger the brain like we're talking about before. And that's where all that hindrance can come. So the time travel, stop time traveling. Yes. Stay here. Keep your brain where your feet are. Awesome. And vice versa. Any traits or? personalities that you have seen that can facilitate recovery? Yeah, one that is really interesting that we know through research is, uh, is your social support, um, and making sure that you, uh, it's really, this one is really fascinating to me cause it's, it's not, um, necessarily received support, like actually getting support, but it's, um, your perception that if you reach out for support, it's going to be there for you. So that knowing that you have support is a really big buffer against stress. So anything you can do too, because your body's healing and stress, you know, when we're under higher levels of stress, it can have an impact, a negative impact on your immune system. And so you really, you know, stress is a critical component in terms of thinking about healing and setting yourself up for success with the healing process and anything you can do to manage your stress. And one of the greatest buffers. against stress is social support. But in addition to the social support and that piece, there's different types of support that athletes need. And so when you can really tap into recognizing what type of support you need and who you have or who you can reach out to, to help give you that support and be proactive about and take ownership over asking for that support is a really big piece in here as well. So we need like informational support. Like you need so information about, you know, what's happening in your body and what the trajectory of your rehabilitation looks like. Um, you need motivational support, which is like people that they're like your cheerleaders and people that believe in you and know that you can do this. And then you might need, um, emotional support, which is like people that will listen without judgment and kind of kind of hold the space when you just need to vent or you need someone to hear that you're having a hard day. And then and tangible support, which is like, I need somebody to go to the grocery store for me because I can't drive my car, like actual assistance. So at any given point throughout your injury, you might need different types of support. And one of the challenges, a big challenge for athletes is when the support that they need in that moment is different than the support that's being given. And there's another, there's an assumption that happens here, which is a big fat myth that the, that if this person really cared about me, they would give me the exact support I need in the exact moment that I needed. But it's just not how it works. Like sometimes they're really giving you the best support they know how. And it's just a mismatch for what you need in that moment. So I see this come up a lot. Like you're going in to see your physical therapist or your surgeon or whoever it is, you're going into your healthcare provider and what you need in that moment is emotional support. But what you're being given is informational support. And it just, it can it when all the athlete needs in that moment is to hear from you. I know this is hard and I know you're scared, but we're going to figure this out together. Um, and that the relief that comes from that, it's like now that person can hear you. Um, whereas it, you know, if they're not getting that support and you go straight to informational, they're not going to hear anything you say, but people don't know that, right? So it's, you know, it's not something we talk about this mismatch that happens sometimes. So yeah, as the athlete, you have to recognize and understand. What type of support do I need and, and who can I get that from? Um, and be realistic with some people, their strength is not in a particular area. So if you're looking to someone for one kind of support, but they might be supporting you the best way they know how, and they don't have that who else in your network can provide that for you. Can I throw a hypothetical scenario at you just for a couple of maybe examples or options that someone can have. Let's just say we have a runner who's. who loves running, absolutely passionate about running, doesn't have any friends or family that do run and they're now injured and they see a physio and the physio they've seen before helps them get better, but it's a very superficial relationship. There's no like real deep connection. There's just like, this is how you get better. You get better and you go. Um, if there's someone like that, that is injured and is on their way to recovery, but not really, or is lacking that social support. What options do they have? What are some examples where they can find that social support? Yeah, the number one place to go is on Facebook to the Injured Athletes Club. Ah, tip. Yeah, because what's interesting is it is challenging when you, if you're a runner and you're injured and you're in your immediate circle, right? Like your close family and friends aren't. runners or maybe not athletes and they don't that's not how they experience the world they might not Quite get what you're going through and so i'll hear that sometimes it's like oh, I know my you know A spouse is getting sick of me talking about this like So to find a support group whether it's the injured athletes club or wherever you go Where you know those it's okay for me to talk about this here and nobody's going to get sick of it because we all get it um, so So there are places if you're like Or that means maybe you're connecting with your teammates Um, and it's funny with my endurance athletes, sometimes they forget that like, it's okay to see each other outside of training, like, because you're just used to like, this is the person I run with. This is, or we go, you know, we go to a master swim together and like, that's where I see them. So sometimes like, you know, one of the things I'm helping them recognize is like, it's okay for you to reach out to your teammate and like, Hey, can we grab a cup of coffee? And then you have someone that's an athlete that can hear you. Um, I know sometimes that's hard for people. because they feel like it brings up emotions around, like this person is able to do things I'm not able to do right now. But if you can push past that, I guarantee you it's worth it to reach out for that support. So leaning on your teammates in a way that maybe you haven't in the past. And then also looking at what kind of online groups might there be where I can get that type of support, where I'll be able to be in a group. of people that do get it and do get the struggle and it is okay for me to still be talking about this six months from now because it's important to you and it gives your life meaning and you need a place to be able to talk about it. Yeah. And the other thing I'll add is as well, if you do feel a bit shy and don't want to reach out to the Facebook group is just join the group anyway and just read a couple of posts that are on the page and show that, well, it just shows that people are injured and they are asking questions and there is support if you look at their comments and you, other people, um, help support them. It's good to s to just to say that there are communities out there that help. And maybe that might help you come forward and write a post and, uh, create a post about what you're going through, what emotions you're feeling and. Make and just like allow some acceptance, acceptance and people just to take you in and offer advice that kind of thing would just be a good step. Just join the group and just have a bit of a read through the feeds and. Um, see what other people are posting, what situations they're going through. Mm-hmm. Yeah. A lot of people do that. They just join in and they get, they get so much just from reading and don't necessarily share and then sometimes, and then sometimes it'll be like three months later, they're like, okay, I finally decided to post, but they needed time to just like see other people's stories. Yeah. I often think of like runners, they have behaviors and they have strategies that they don't really identify that it's not serving them. And it's similar to this chronic pain stuff in the brain or that they have these, um, coping strategies or defense mechanisms, and they don't actually recognize that it's hindering their recovery. And so the final question I thought I'd ask is what are some questions that a runner can ask themselves to kind of self-reflect to see if their behaviors or their strategies that they're implementing aren't actually serving them? Yeah. What a great question. One thing to think about is that idea that sometimes our greatest strength is also our greatest challenge, like with the idea of being stubborn. And so exploring that for yourself, like what do you feel like is some of your biggest sort of personality traits and, you know, or things that maybe you do struggle with and how is that a strength and how is that a hindrance right now in this context? So if you're a perfectionist, if you're really driven, if you're stubborn, whatever it is, just playing with, let's flip that coin and see what it looks like on the reverse. Like how is this helping me and how is this hindering me? I'm a really big proponent for writing things out, like pen to paper journaling. It's a really powerful way to process our emotions and to allow your brain to make neural connections in ways that don't necessarily happen. if you're talking to someone about it, I mean, sometimes it will, but it's just, it's a different way if you're needing that space to be able to process, like writing this down. So I'd write, I would actually put pen to paper as you do this, and you don't have to say that, you don't have to have to read it again. What's amazing about this is that the ability, like what you get from it comes from just the putting pen to paper and writing about it, and you're starting to build those neural connections, even if you never look at it again. So, So I would write this stuff out like, okay, so if I look at my, somebody might describe me as being stubborn. So what ways do I feel like that's helped me in my life? What ways do I think it's helped me in my injury recovery? What ways has it held me back in my life? What ways has it held me back in my injury recovery? And you'll start to see maybe some of the themes between the two. Another thing you can do is, that helps sometimes is an exercise called, stop, start, continue. So you can ask yourself and just brainstorm on those three different points of like, okay, with my injury recovery, what do I need to stop doing in order to get through this optimally and successfully? What do I need to start doing? And then what do I need to continue doing? So it helps us identify what am I doing that's going well? Because oftentimes it's not black and white, right? There are things you're doing that are great. And then what are things that maybe you need to eliminate? or things that you need to stop doing in order to help with optimal recovery and being honest with yourself about that. And then what do I need to start doing? So sometimes that's a good sort of brainstorm exercise to begin that process of looking at what are the ways I might be getting in my own way. Yeah. And all of these are kind of mental drills and lessons that you do have in your book, which is fantastic that you have like the theory side of things and then some actual practical. questions and tasks and things for people to complete. I think writing down things of is very, very important to recognizing themes. And sometimes people just like, they just idly go by with their, their own personalities and they don't recognize that a certain personality trait that they do have could be what's helped serve them, what's helped build up their performance. Um, but then they don't recognize that other strategies that I have aren't serving them and do create repeating kind of hiccups throughout their running career. And you won't recognize it until you reflect and write things down and you might think, oh, you know what, I've been injured every couple of months, but it has been every time that a race is coming up or it has been every time that I have had stress with work or that kind of loss of sleep or something like that. And you won't recognize until you write it down. Cause it's very hard to remember and categorize and put these all in and self-reflect that way. So very, very good. And it's a good way to finish up here because all these lessons are written in the book and we can go to the book. So, uh, Carrie, if we are interested in buying rebound and we love this interview and we want to learn more, uh, where can they go? Yeah, check out the injured athletes club website. It's www. And there there's resources for where you can buy the book. There's all kinds of other resources there as well, including the injured athletes club podcast. So that's a great, if you're an injured athlete, that's a great place to go. You can also check out my website, which is www.karycheetle.com. And I have a blog there and you can follow me on social media as well. And I've got all kinds of resources there. Um, for athletes, um, and exercisers as well. Great. I'll link to the injured athletes club, the website, the podcast, the Facebook group as well, and, uh, your personal website as well to look into the blogs. Um, is there anything we haven't touched on today that you want to get a message across to runners or do you think we've covered everything? Um, great question. No, not possible. It's not possible to cover everything, but we covered so much. I think, yeah, this is actually really, it's been fantastic. We did cover quite a bit. I think just, um, you know, remembering that you will get through this. I think sometimes you just need to remind yourself of that and to know that, um, how you're feeling in this moment isn't how you'll be feeling forever. Cause it can be quite an emotional roller coaster, um, to go through the injury recovery process and also to know Sometimes it's confusing for athletes if their emotional landscape feels different from one injury to another. And especially if like I've been injured before and it wasn't a problem, I didn't get my confidence wasn't shook. And now it is. It can be really confusing. And sometimes that just happens. But there are tools that, you know, in the book and there are things you can do to get support. And sometimes we just need someone else to be there to help mirror it like your coach or... a certified mental performance consultant, like somebody that helps you through that journey. So don't be, don't be afraid to reach out for support if you need it. Yeah, fantastic. And it's a great book. Thank you for creating such a unique book. And when I was reading it, I'm like, Oh my God, how come I haven't found a book that is like this? Because every runner needs to know it, not for injured or non injured athletes. They still need to recognize these patterns as well. And So I want to say thank you for creating the book to start with, but also thank you for providing like an avenue. It's kind of like an oasis for injured runners with the Facebook group and with the podcast and with the website, all that sort of thing for them to go to, to find some answers and find the support. And I do have my new favorite saying, which is, we've mentioned a couple times today, recovery is now your sport. And it's, it's such a nice way to sum it up. And. like shift some identity or keep your identity but change the circumstances. And I know that after reading this book I'm recognizing like thought patterns and my own attitudes towards injury as well. And you're responsible for that. So thank you very much for doing all that you're doing now and it's been a pleasure chatting to you today. Thank you. It's been my pleasure. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Running Smarter Podcast. I hope you can see the impact this content will have on your future running. If you want to continue expanding your knowledge, please subscribe to the podcast and keep listening. If you want to learn quicker, jump into the Facebook group titled Become a Smarter Runner. If you want tailored education and physio rehab, you can personally work with me at brea Thank you so much once again and remember, knowledge is power.