Serena de Nahlik thinks it’s time to talk about injury. Or perhaps, more specifically, how we should talk to people who are injured.

When our bodies and/or our minds prevent us from playing, it’s a really tough time. There’s been a lot of research on the mental health benefits of playing sport, but there is also lots of evidence to suggest that physical injury (particularly long-term) can have a profoundly negative effect on someone’s mental health. We play a sport that is very, very harsh on our bodies, and it’s not uncommon for folks to be injured, and for injuries to recur over a player’s career. It’s really hard to keep working through hours of physio, whilst everyone else is playing tournaments and bossing their gym sessions and generally appearing to have a better time than you. It’s even harder to come to a tournament as a sideline player – arguably one of the most valuable people at a tournament – and watch your teammates play. Sometimes you see opportunities where you could have made a difference. Sometimes you’re calling the force but the play is too far away and they can’t hear you. Sometimes it’s even simpler: you just want to be out there playing again.

I’d guess that most ultimate players have been injured at some point in their career. It might not have been an ACL tear or a dislocated shoulder, but there have probably been times where you’ve not been able to play. And it sucked, right? And if it was for a long-term thing, it REALLY sucked. Or when you’re at your first tournament back after an injury and you can feel a niggle, and you start to worry that maybe you’re not better after all. All of these situations are really, really rubbish.

Yet, when we bump into a friend at a tournament who’s on the sideline, not playing, what do we do? We say things like:

“Are you (still) broken/injured (again)?”

“Didn’t you injure that before?”

“I thought you’d recovered from that?”

I’m going to be honest here: I have never once found these things helpful. As someone who has had their fair share of injuries (ACL tear, 2014 due to a collision // back and shoulder chronic pain and mobility issues since 2017 due to laying out strangely // hip flexor tendonitis in Spring 2019), I have had these things said to me SO many times, but I just don’t think people realise the effect that these can have on someone’s thoughts.

Let’s just remind ourselves about why the friend has come to the tournament. Their team is here. They want to support. They love ultimate. They love the people, and the game. They are probably bored out of their mind now that they’re not playing all the time, and are feeling cooped up at home. They want to stay connected to their team, and want to miss out on as little of the season as possible. So they’ve very bravely decided to come along, even though they can’t play. They realise that someone on the sideline can be one of THE MOST important members of a team, and can help with tactics, water, sidelining, support, snacks – so much. They’re coming with a purpose, and a role, yet it still doesn’t feel the same as actually playing.

So when the well-meaning friend comes along and says “Buddy! Are you broken again?”, on a good day it can be taken in the way it was meant – a friendly comment with interest in your health. But on a bad day, or when it’s the fifth time someone’s asked about the physical state of your body in the past hour, it can really grind you down. It can feel like a horrible reminder that you can’t play the sport you love at the moment, that your body isn’t working very well, but also it can feel as though you only have value and/or purpose at a tournament if you’re playing. It can start to perpetuate a cycle of really negative thoughts: “why is my body like this? People must think I’m weak. I wish I could play. All these other people are playing and I can’t. All I can do is sideline and bring water to my teammates but that’s nothing compared to running around. Maybe I shouldn’t have come. Maybe I’ll never get better, as I’m ‘always’ injured. I wish someone would just ask me how I’m doing or how my day is going”.

So in an effort to try and suggest a positive change to how we interact with our injured friends or teammates, I’d like everyone who reads this to take home four key thoughts: