THE very nature of competitions involves a degree of physical risk and inevitably athletes get hurt which could mean championships lost because athletes cannot or could not perform because of injuries.
Moreover, a number of sports careers have been terminated because of injuries or accidents. Sometimes, the loss of an athlete is the lost of the coach. It could mean coaches and his staff get gray hairs and go totally bald, simply because they could not field a healthy team. Still for some coaches it could mean becoming unemployed.
Though it is not as simple as it seems, injuries have different kinds, from a simple scratch to fractures. To further investigate or determine frequently observed phenomenon of an athlete's injury, and why they are prone to it, the motivations of athletes' must be known to understand the reason behind the kind of injuries they have.
We should understand first that there is no single type of an injury-prone athlete because an injury may range from an unconscious suicide attempt to an athlete who is actually malingering to avoid competitions. Not to mention that some accidents are psychological.
But from a psychological viewpoint, we can define the injury-prone athlete into categories: the athletes who have actually been injured, those who constantly complain of pain but no injury is apparent, and the athlete who intentionally fakes an injury.
In general, the injured athlete and the meaning of injury is not fully understood by the individual. This is because we never know the motivations why and what is and that which caused the injury.
In some instances athletes, in fact, work unconsciously towards being injured since it can serve as a strong protective device.
This is because when athletes get injured many explanations are given as such, bad luck, stupidity, accidental, etc. name it and they will have all reasons, because the underlying cause of injury may be the result of many different things.
The categories of an injury-prone athlete as mentioned, with the underlying reasons may have even greater passion or interest of primarily avoiding the competition: the fear of being exposed as infirm, the need to stay with the team in any capacity, and the search for sympathy and concern.
In some instances, injured athletes gain more acclaim rather than those who are well. This can be used by the coach to differentiate the real injury from that which may be used for other reasons.
In the true injury the dramatics appear to be of less importance, rather there is an intense desire to return to health in order to compete.
Handling such injury-prone athletes involves much concentration on the strong, rather than the weak, points of the athlete. Ignoring the injury and concentrating on the athlete as a person will also have more beneficial effects in the long run than dealing with the injury alone.
Certainly the task at hand in handling such athletes seems a monstrous one. But it need not be because an athlete has so many positive attributes which can be shaped.
Handling such athletes is giving a positive genuine regard, protect the athlete from destroying himself, let him go if it needs to be as an example for others and always bear in mind that his worth as an athlete as well as his abilities is motivated by other forces than the level of the sport.
In these ways the athlete can become more realistic about his athletic responsibilities as well as developing a feeling that the concern about his/her welfare is genuine.