How Do You Regain Confidence in Running After Injury?

Not only do injuries suck but they bring with them a whole truckload of mind games. From sadness to fear to lack of confidence, physical injuries can quickly become psychological injuries. It’s important to recognize and normalize that having an emotional reaction to injury is healthy. Loss, sadness, anxiety, anger, frustration, and uncertainty are common initial reactions to injury. However, for some runners after these initial feelings fear begins to set in. Fear of if they will ever perform to the same standard they did before. Fear of how long it will take to regain their fitness. Fear of re-injury. These fears can quickly erode a runner’s confidence in their abilities. 

Before we dive into how to regain confidence after injury, I think it is important to explore why fear develops. Fear is often the result of uncertainty, lack of control, and a threat to something important to us or a part of our identity. In injury all of these areas come online and with them comes a narrative that shapes our beliefs about our ability to return from injury. If that narrative is overwhelmingly negative and doubtful then our confidence will begin to be eroded. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt will be the underlying hum of our return to sport making us overly cautious and missing the belief that leads to breakthroughs.

While it is best to stop the negative thoughts from spiraling into fear that erodes confidence, it is hard to do when you are in the middle of injury. Thankfully, even if we do dip into the doubt narrative confidence is a highly trainable skill. If you’ve found yourself fearing and doubting your return to sport here are a few ways that you can rebuild your confidence and perhaps make it even better than it was prior to injury!

• Develop Awareness

  • The first step to regaining confidence is slowing down and developing awareness of the beliefs, feelings, thoughts, and actions that got you to the place you are at. Grab a pen and some paper and divide it into three columns: ACUTE (when first injured), ACTIVE RECOVERY (while resting/doing PT/unable to perform but understand timeframe and injury, and RETURN TO SPORT. Reflect on each of these stages and write down the beliefs, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors that were occurring.

• Challenge your Beliefs

  • Use the chart you created and begin to write out alternative, confident thoughts. Write these on a sticky note and place it on your mirror or car dash. Also, make a list of things you can do to build confidence. Examples could be signing up for a race, doing a small workout, run an easy technical downhill. After you create your list write a date next to it that you are going to do it.

• Practice Curiosity and Exploration

  • It’s normal post-injury to find yourself afraid to do a workout because you’re not sure if your body can handle it but if you’ve been medically cleared then the only way to know for sure if your body can or can’t is to try. If you believe your body can’t handle it then most likely that is what will be manifested either through phantom pain or negative self-talk that makes you quit. If you expect that you are going to perform worse than before or that it will take a long time to regain your fitness then that is most likely what will occur. When we place expectations birthed out of fear on our returns, we limit our ability to come back stronger than before. I like athletes to replace expectations with curiosity and exploration. Taking each day as an opportunity to observe their physical and psychological states then adjusting things when necessary. You don’t have to be overly optimistic but try practicing grace and compassion with your return.

Injuries are common in running. Anyone seeking to push their limits and reach their potential will eventually be sidelined with injury. While injured it is easy to neglect the impact the injury is having on you psychologically and allow negativity and doubt to creep in. It is not uncommon for runners to lack confidence when returning to sport post-injury. With some self-reflection, reframing, and practicing curiosity runners can recultivate their confidence and self-belief to return stronger than before.