A Lesson in Injuries From USWNT Pros

So, one of your players is injured. You ask the same question every time you see them. “How’s the injury?” You get the same answer every time – “I’m okay.”

Let’s face it. Your athletes need some good advice on how to deal with an injury. And they need to hear it from someone they will pay attention to, meaning someone other than you.

Do you think they’d listen to a pair of U.S. women’s national team players – Carli Lloyd and Crystal Dunn?

With years of experience, Lloyd, now 34, has learned to take care of her body. With far fewer years of experience, the 24-year-old Dunn has been taught the same painful lessons.

“I’ve been through a handful and every injury is different,” says Lloyd the reigning world women’s soccer player of the year. “There’s no set time frame for an injury.  The doctors will diagnose it and say you’ll be back in three or four weeks. But you really have to go with how your body is responding.”

“With every injury I’ve been through, I have taken my time,” she explains. “People may have criticized me for that, but I don’t get another injury right after I come back. You see that so many times. People come back too soon and get re-injured, or suffer another injury.”

The first step in properly dealing with an injury is perhaps the most difficult for many young players. Sitting out is not something anyone wants to do. Standing around watching while your teammates train – and perhaps perform well enough to take your spot – is miserable.

Crystal Dunn went through that in the U.S. women’s national team’s preparation for the 2015 World Cup. Trying to win a spot on the team for her first major international event, Dunn had to first overcome a knee injury. While she rehabbed, others moved in front of her on coach Jill Ellis’ depth chart. Ultimately, Dunn stayed home while the USA won the World Cup in Canada.

Dunn didn’t want to appear weak, even though her body wasn’t ready to return. She now knows being honest with herself about her injury and recovery was the correct path.

“There is a difference between being strong and being stupid,” says Dunn, who went on to stand out for the USA in the 2016 Olympics. “Honesty goes a long way.”

Holding back information from your doctors or coaches, Lloyd says, can ultimately delay your return.

“You are not doing the coach, doctors or trainers any good lying about your symptoms,” says Lloyd. “They can’t treat you like they want to treat you. I’ve seen that as well. I’ve seen players who don’t necessarily want to speak up and say anything because they feel they may get cut or not get selected. Its ruined some people’s career. If you look at the longevity of people’s careers, the ones who have taken care of themselves and their injuries tend to have a longer career, and that’s what it’s all about.”

Dunn suffered a high ankle sprain in 2014 while a senior at the University of North Carolina. She returned to the field too soon. What followed was several new additions to her medical chart.

“I had a lot of issues in 2014,” she says. “Kids don’t want to hear this but they need to rest. My main issue in 2014 was that I had five injuries that basically stemmed from one injury that I was always trying to come back too soon from. If you have an injury that takes two months to heal, you need to take that time to heal. When you come back, you might not injure the same thing, but you will injure something else on your body. My body got weak and wasn’t strong enough to come back from the injury.”

Her reason for pushing the limits of her recovery? “I didn’t want to miss anything.”

As it turned out, she missed quite a bit and learned the lesson of injury treatment and prevention, the hard way.