Have you ever wondered how somebody can recover from an injury and still be able to reach the same peak they once had? It’s reasonable to imagine that an athlete being crippled by a major injury, like an ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) tear, for example, may struggle to get back in their sport due to the permanent effects of their injuries. But sports are activities that depend largely on skill. As such, there are always some athletes that can improve not by reaching their physical prime for a second time, but by refining and reinforcing their skills after recovery.
Providing a more personal example, I myself am a somewhat accomplished athlete in track and field. Earlier this year, mid way through the season, I had developed noticeable swelling in my right quad, limiting the top speed I could run at and how well I could maintain it. Yet before I got officially diagnosed by my school’s medic, I was still able to run my personal bests in my main events because I continued training with my coach and progressed in using techniques that would help me maintain my top speed with less effort. By the time I had recovered from my injury, I had reinforced my skills to the point where I made new personal bests in every event that I ran.
In the same way I kept developing my skill despite an injury, so can professional athletes. Taking a look at tennis, there are about as many athletes with injuries as there are cars on a packed highway. With that said, quite a few of them have suffered serious injuries. A fair share of these injuries seem to be derived from the wrist, with some examples being Kei Nishikori, Marat Safin, Dominic Thiem, and Kim Clijsters all tearing either their hands’ ligaments or tendons. The recovery time of these four ranged from 5-11 months and the consequences seemed rather severe. Their combined win-loss records after their recoveries were 185-102, meaning they on average won 64.4 % of the time. Nishikori dropped to rank number 22, Safin to no. 86, and Thiem was especially unlucky, dropping from no.5 all the way down to no. 352. Seemingly not very impressive for upper-tier professional athletes, right? But taking a step back and seeing the bigger picture, all of the aforementioned athletes managed to climb back up the rankings by the end of the year they debuted after, with Safin even getting all the way up to no. 4. Long story short, even athletes that suffer injuries to body parts that are especially pivotal to their sport, like wrists for tennis players, are still capable of making comebacks and staying
prominent.
Injuries may be a crippling part of life, but that doesn’t mean we can’t rise up from such adversities and become better versions of ourselves. Don’t get me wrong, it’ll take time and effort, just as it did with professional athletes. But in the end, anybody can learn skills to compensate for their injuries and to even excel because of them.
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