Let's face it, injuries happen. In this episode, Wahoo Sports Science coaches Mac Cassin and Suzie Snyder talk about the ABCs of how best to get back into training after an injury.
There are two kinds of cyclists: those who have crashed and those who will crash. Injuries happen, especially if you're competitive. Wahoo Sports Science coaches Mac Cassin and Suzie Snyder are no strangers to crashes. In this episode, Mac and Suzie talk about the ABCs of how to properly ease back into training after an injury. From the importance of a positive mindset to how soon you should start back, this episode will help you get back on track should you find yourself on the business end of an injury.
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Mac Cassin 0:00
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the knowledge podcast brought to you by the Wahoo sports science team here in Boulder, Colorado. I'm Matt Cassin senior sports scientist,
Suzie Snyder 0:08
and I'm Susie Snyder, multi-sport coaching specialist. And in today's episode, we're gonna discuss the ABCs of returning from an injury. Honestly, Mac, this topic kind of hurts just thinking about all the injuries that we've had. But take a deep breath. And let's go.
Mac Cassin 0:21
So we're going to start this off with a nice big disclaimer that we are not doctors. Dr. J. Ginger is not here, but she's a different kind of doctor. Anyway, every injury is unique. These are general steps that can apply to most injuries. But always make sure you check with your doctor first.
Suzie Snyder 0:35
That's right. It's always the most important thing. Make sure you get your doctor's okay with everything you want to do along the way. Now, some of you might be thinking, Yeah, this is a great episode for me, because I get hurt all the time. Others of you may be a little more fortunate and not so injury prone. But no matter what, if you're an athlete or just an active person, you're at risk of getting hurt eventually, especially if you're pretty competitive. So hopefully everybody can take away something from this episode.
Mac Cassin 1:00
Yeah, I'll say, unfortunately, between the two of us certainly kept several doctors in business over the years. Despite that, we both managed to bounce back and have plenty of big results get back to a high level after those injuries to prove our cred here, in that we know what we're talking about. Suzy, why don't you share some of those big injuries and then the results you got after bouncing back from them?
Suzie Snyder 1:20
Okay, well, I think the biggest one for me in 2015, I had a couple of crashes. The first one was a separated shoulder. So recovering from that pretty well. And then towards the end of the year, I crashed again, fractured my pelvis, and separated the other shoulder keeping it balanced. That's good. Yeah, it's important. That took almost a year to recover. So during that time, I mostly follow the doctor's orders. But I did do something really dumb and raced at Sarah pan-am champs about six weeks after the crash. I mean, there was $6,000 on the line. I was having a really good season. I couldn't just let that paycheck go. I'd worked hard all season for that.
Mac Cassin 1:57
What's Yeah, what's pushing through a little bit of a broken pelvis. Like
Suzie Snyder 2:01
I figured as long as I can swim, bike, and run, at least walk and cross the finish line. That's all I had to do to make my paycheck at the time I was buying for the series when which obviously it couldn't do anymore. But that Payneham champ was a pretty big paycheck for me. So I figured Marty was broken. It doesn't hurt too bad. So I'll suck it up and make it happen. It probably wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done.
Mac Cassin 2:25
I'll throw a disclaimer to everyone. No, it was not the smartest thing I've ever done.
Suzie Snyder 2:29
No, no, it's not. So that's probably the worst thing. A couple of weeks ago, I did actually race exterra worlds with a minor calf tear, which I did probably four weeks before the race. And I was smart. I stopped running on it. I did all the therapy I possibly could. It didn't hurt going into the race I ran decently considering hadn't run in four weeks and managed fifth place. And it was a duathlon So double the running.
Mac Cassin 2:58
Those you don't know, extra Worlds this year, they canceled the swim portion. So they did a run bike run.
Suzie Snyder 3:04
It's terrible. I did lose a lot of time in that first run. But yeah, what are you gonna do?
Mac Cassin 3:10
But hey, top five worlds?
Suzie Snyder 3:12
I'll take it. Alright, that's my dumb moment. What about yours? Ooh,
Mac Cassin 3:17
where to start? I've had plenty of road rash, I think both knees, hips, elbows, shoulders have probably scar tissue on top of scar tissue. That's pretty standard done the classic broken collarbone and was back on the trainer. I think two days after getting that played it up. Not the smartest, but eight weeks later, was collegiate track mats. And I won a bunch of national titles after riding the trainer for two weeks. So I might have ignored some of the advice we'll get to later. But just ignore that for now. I've had a broken wrist a bunch of concussions, which you know, who can remember how many concussions you've had. And the bigger ones were back injuries. I've got a pretty horrible back. I've had four not three backs, or I'm keeping up one a decade. So hoping to break that streak at some point. But yeah, after I'd won in 2016, I had surgery in March. And by September, six months later, I was racing Pan Am's like on the track. I was riding as well as I ever had been. And it was really that time it was 100% down to being smart. And following the rules that were about to are the steps I should say the ABCs of recovery.
Suzie Snyder 4:21
Obviously, experience is the best teacher and going through the wringer is a lot of experience. And learning the hard way is apparently what we had to do. But maybe yes, during the worst things is the best thing for everyone else to learn from.
Mac Cassin 4:34
We do dumb things so you don't have to.
Suzie Snyder 4:37
So what we're here for you. Alright, so Mac, let's start into those ABCs what we should do coming off of an injury.
Mac Cassin 4:45
All right, so ABCs we're going to go into detail on each of these but the first one is acceptance. Number two, be smart. Number three, care for yourself. Number four, Doctor advice. And lastly, ease back into training. So So what do we mean when we say acceptance here? Are we talking about getting into the school of your dreams? Or are we talking about something else?
Suzie Snyder 5:06
Okay, we all know injuries suck sucks, even more, when it's you, sometimes your own doing sometimes a result of somebody else or something out of your control. Let's keep in mind that some of this is also applicable to illness or sickness and are things that just sideline you from your sport for a significant amount of time. So it's normal to feel angry or sad or frustrated for a little while. And that's okay. But you can't hold on to these emotions because they don't help you heal any faster.
Mac Cassin 5:32
Yeah, there are actually some studies that show that people with a positive attitude and mindset will actually recover faster from injuries being positive and not negative is a big piece here.
Suzie Snyder 5:42
And we want to help ourselves as much as we can make progress. So moving on from that anger stage onto acceptance is really just acknowledging that this is your situation, we've got to do the things we can do, make good use of our time, and the things that we can do, and shift our focus towards step two, which is Be smart.
Mac Cassin 6:02
Step two, be smart. Personally, I prefer to call this step Don't be stupid, but it doesn't fit with the ABC acronym. So be smart. I guess it's a bit friendlier to So be smart. Number one step here is if you're injured, have something going on, get it checked out by a qualified doctor, I think both of us can say we've had plenty of times where we know something's wrong, we're injured in some way. And we just kind of ignore it brushed to the side don't get any professional diagnosis and end up putting in the whole longer than it should have. So don't be stupid, it's gay talking to your doctor getting advice. The one thing I learned early on is, you really need to clarify with your doctor what normal activity every doctor loves to say, you can return to normal activity after the blank amount of weeks. The problem is, for most of us, normal activity is a three, to four-hour bike ride, for most of the patients that the doctor sees normal is like walking around the house. So be very clear about hey, this is what I consider my normal activity. When can I get back to that and listen to them, don't just say, oh, normal activity, cool, the green light to go bungee jumping, because that's a normal Friday night for me be very clear about what normal is for you?
Suzie Snyder 7:07
Yeah, if your doctor says Stay off the bike for six weeks, stay off the bike for six weeks, take them seriously do what you're supposed to do. It's not worth setting yourself back an extra two weeks of rest time or rehab or whatever ended up having to take off just because you were a little too eager to get going again, I think that also goes for little things, little tasks of daily living like cooking and cleaning and walking the dog like when you're inactive person, it's really hard to sit still and not do those things. Because you're used to just having to fit everything in and doo doo doo, go go, go. Let people help you don't take the dog for a walk. If you're juggling crutches, and a dog that wants to chase birds and all this like, you're just gonna get hurt further, at least take the chance of hurting yourself further. Be smart. Number one priority, take care of yourself. This is
Mac Cassin 7:57
probably going to get cut by Eddie, which is fine by me. But when it comes to crutches, I have a great story when I was first trying to date my now wife at CU, we have the course Event Center where you take your midterms when you've got 300 kids in a class, and you have a lapboard that you have to just a piece of wood basically to do your test. And I was texting her and I was on crutches at the time because I broke my ankle. And I was like, hey, we'd really nice to have some help carrying this lapboard with my crutches. And she's Oh yeah, good luck with that. And then. So but it worked out. Yeah, as we're saying that day to day stuff. It's a priority, be smart, be conservative. And that takes us directly into step three, which is care for yourself. What is care for yourself mean? That means proper nutrition, proper hydration, basically, the things you would normally be doing for recovery, pretend like you just had a massive training block, because essentially, what's going on when you're injured, is your body's in extreme recovery mode. It's working very hard putting all its energy into healing, whatever injury you have, so you need to give it the proper nutrition to do the healing. You want to take care of yourself.
Suzie Snyder 9:01
Right? And remember the devils in the details, all the little things eventually add up to the big things. So don't think oh, I'll just have a bowl of ice cream tonight. And those couple of bowls of ice cream are gonna add up to a couple of extra pounds that you're gonna regret down the road.
Mac Cassin 9:16
Okay, so you've accepted, you're injured. You're being smart about it. You've taken care of yourself. Okay, what's the next step to getting back to an elite level?
Suzie Snyder 9:24
I think therapy and rehab is really instrumental step,
Mac Cassin 9:28
which turns out to be step four. Doctor advises. Oh, it's almost like we planned that transition. Well, so yeah, physical therapy, doctor's advice, rehab, whatever you want to call it. It's probably the most important thing you can do once you've had an injury diagnosed and you're trying to get back on the right path. And it's honestly something even when I have friends or family who are injured who aren't athletes, I cannot preach enough physical therapy afterward because even if it's normal day-to-day stuff, it helps you get back to normal. You're normal activity a lot sooner. And so I've always been fortunate being here in Boulder in Colorado that there's always a lot of sports-specific PTS around because there's a lot of us exercise enthusiasts who get injured here in Colorado. And so I've always been fortunate to have an easy time finding someone who's more specific to sports. But take the time to find a good PT find a good doctor that's more specific, knows more about what you'd like to do, so they can help get you back faster.
Suzie Snyder 10:26
That's right. Most of these physical therapists and physios like to give you exercises to do at home, on your own time outside of your dedicated time in the clinic with them, I think that's a really good way to satisfy your need for training is to use those exercises as your exercise time, if you've now had a bunch of free time that you didn't use to have because you're not doing a two-hour bike ride. So do your exercises at home. A lot of times at home exercises are kind of hard to make yourself do but if you reframe your way of thinking and think this is my way back, that's what you got to do that kind of enhances your motivation. Yeah, treat
Mac Cassin 11:03
it like this is your training. Now you have a big event, you haven't six months, okay, your training now is the PT, support for everything you got into it. And take it slow. Again, listen to your doctor, listen to your physical therapist, if they say to start with one set of five, and then tomorrow, do one set of eight. And then the next day one set of 10. Don't just do three sets of 10 right out of the gate. You need to take it slow. And sometimes Yeah, it feels it seems too easy. Sometimes you might even feel like why am I doing this? There's no way this is having a benefit. But if it's been prescribed to you by someone qualified, you should do it.
Suzie Snyder 11:34
That's right. And you can use that seem too easy, as little sign of success or positive reinforcement and motivation to continue doing it and continue you know, following your steps doing everything, right.
Mac Cassin 11:48
Yeah, going for I remember when I broke my collarbone, I had to do shoulder raises with a half-pound weight. I was like this is ridiculous. But then being a Psych was broken collarbone. It was really hard after five of them. And then yeah, as it went on, I got I think my shoulder was probably the strongest I've ever been after that rehab because I was really focused on getting everything in place. Okay, so now we've done PT, we're doing our exercises at home, we're taking care of ourselves for being smart or not being stupid. So then it ranges Jump, jumps right back to full training, right? Once we get the green light to go to train again, we just fall send it and do a fitness test. Do you know and that's fine. Well,
Suzie Snyder 12:25
you and I would but again, not what you should do, again. So it might seem too easy at first but ease back into it. So this is the E of the ABCs. ease back into training. Don't rush it right, you've taken care of yourself for this long. Don't throw away all that progress by doing too much too soon.
Mac Cassin 12:47
Yeah. When I was coming back in 2016, from my back surgery, I finally kind of wore down my doctor to give me the green light to do a five-minute spin and increase by one minute every day. And so that's what I did. I got on the trainer five minutes the Next day, six minutes the Next day, seven minutes all the way up until I hit I think 25 minutes. And then I gotta go right outside. Oh, it was a time. Yeah. But again, it has taken several months to get to that point. And there's no way I was going to just set myself back another two months by you're right at the finish line. You're right there. Yeah, be smart, don't go full sand,
Suzie Snyder 13:19
right, you're still in healing mode, right, we have to remember that. So just because you're able to do a little bit of activity, it doesn't mean you're going to adapt to the training like you normally would, right, your body is still trying to heal that injury. And now you're adding training stress to it are additional stress. So it's gonna just add on to the load. And, again, reduce that healing time,
Mac Cassin 13:42
you're not going to get faster, you're not gonna be able to train at the same level and recover from that training. Because, yeah, your body's focused on other stuff. And then eventually, okay, you start easy, then that transitions back into higher intensity. And that one, I think we'll kind of not go into much detail about that one. Just say again, listen to your doctors, listen to your physical therapist, when you get the green light to work out. Like they're the only ones who are going to tell you when it's okay for you to work out hard, just know that you need to ease into it first, Don't get impatient right at the end there.
Suzie Snyder 14:12
Start slowly ramp things back up with short sessions. Again, follow your doctor's orders, if he gives you a limit stick to that limit, it's not going to be satisfying, right, you're going to be like, oh, so easy. But you might still notice that your heart rates are a little bit higher than it was before the injury at that same effort level. But one of the things that happen with endurance training is you increase the blood plasma volume. So this just makes exercise feel easier. You're able to take in and process oxygen faster and easier. So you have to let your body rebuild this adaptation without any intensity before you can build up that intensity again.
Mac Cassin 14:50
And that's true for any time you take a break of a couple of weeks when you start working out again, right, you'll notice your heart rates elevated. We'll probably have a whole other episode about that sort of thing because my Go to hack for that, as always just hit up a sauna for the week before returning, because that does the same thing with plasma volume, but we won't get into that. Okay, so now that we've given those ABCs the ease of recovering, we've talked about this a bit, and you gave you a great example of racing with a broken pelvis. I'll throw in the very stupidest thing I've done was fixing a cleat to the bottom of its foot cast, I broke my ankle, I broke both ankle bones, which is quite impressive. When it's because you were running on the trails. I don't run anymore. Yeah, I really wanted to ride the trainer. So obviously, the best solution there is to strap a cleat to the bottom of your cast. So the stack height doesn't change because that's clearly what the problem was for me if it was the stack height. Yeah, so I probably rode the train, I think for about three weeks, an hour a day on a cast, which was very, very stupid.
Suzie Snyder 15:49
Wow. Good work. Good ingenuity. I'll give you that. So let's recap. Moving on from the stupid things we've done. Recapping everything first step except that you're injured. refocus your energy to step two,
Mac Cassin 16:04
which is Be smart. Which again, you can interpret as Don't be stupid, which I prefer. Yeah, be smart. See,
Suzie Snyder 16:11
take care of yourself. Make sure you're eating healthy, hydrating, sleeping, the proper amounts, really just taking the best care of yourself that you probably can't.
Mac Cassin 16:21
And you've got doctor's advice, which goes to include your physical therapist and any rehab you have associated with recovery.
Suzie Snyder 16:29
That's right. And last, ease back into training slowly. Don't throw intensity too soon. You've invested too much time into your recovery process. So throw it all away.
Mac Cassin 16:38
So we hope no one ever gets injured and has to use this information. But if you do find yourself sidelined, come back give this episode another listen. You'll be better prepared to deal with it appropriately. And you can probably have another laugh at our expense with all the ill-advised things we've done over the years.
Suzie Snyder 16:53
Yeah, well with that. Thanks for listening to the knowledge podcast by Wahoo.
So till next time, thanks for listening to the knowledge podcast by Wahoo. I said podcasts kid. When did I become Canadian?