When you’re injured, the goal is usually pretty simple: get back to football as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, some of the things athletes do trying to speed that process up can actually keep them out for longer.
Here are five of the most common mistakes I see.
1. Assuming pain-free means ready
Pain settling is a good sign, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the injury has fully recovered.
Strength, movement, confidence and the ability to tolerate football-specific loads can all lag behind improvements in pain.
This is particularly important when returning to sprinting, jumping, changing direction or contact.
Criteria for returning to play can be complex and need a thorough assessment to ensure it is performed safely.
2. Pushing through an injury
Footballers are generally pretty good at convincing themselves they’ll be fine.
A small niggle becomes something you train through, play through, and then deal with afterwards.
Sometimes that works. Other times, an injury that may have required a relatively short period of modified training becomes something that hangs around for months.
Knowing when to push and when to back off is an important part of managing injuries properly.
3. Ignoring healing timeframes
Rehabilitation can improve strength and function, but it can’t completely bypass biology.
Muscles, ligaments, tendons and bones all need time to heal, oftentimes a lot longer than an athlete would like.
You might feel dramatically better before the injured tissue has recovered enough to tolerate full football.
I use expected healing timeframes alongside symptoms and physical testing when deciding how quickly someone should progress.
Returning because you feel like you’re ready isn’t quite enough.
4. Assuming it won’t happen again
Once an injury settles, it’s easy to forget about it.
Unfortunately, previous injury is an important risk factor for future injury, particularly with problems such as calf strains and ankle sprains.
That doesn’t mean re-injury is inevitable, but it does mean rehabilitation, return to training and ongoing prevention work deserve to be taken seriously.
5. Doing your rehab… while doing everything else
This is one I see particularly often with junior athletes.
They complete their exercises perfectly, but they’re also doing school sport, PE, athletics day, club training, lunchtime football and maybe some extra running on the side.
All of that counts as load.
Rehabilitation doesn’t exist separately from everything else you’re doing.
Sometimes recovery requires temporarily modifying activities outside of your rehab sessions so the injured area actually has an opportunity to settle and adapt.
Getting back properly
A good return to football isn’t about finding the earliest possible day you can survive a training session.
Rehabilitation should progressively rebuild what the injury has taken away, while giving the body enough time and recovery to adapt.
A few extra days spent getting that process right can be far better than spending another few weeks back on the sidelines.
