Ego and Injury



Most of the time you read posts here that address the importance of high self-esteem on sport performance. But here's a twist. Can too much self-esteem be injurious to an athlete?

That's what the results of a study by a team of French and US researchers seem to suggest. They looked at predictors of perceived susceptibility to sport-related injury and found -- ouch -- that neuroticism and global self-esteem were more related to perceived susceptibility to injury that having been previously injured.

First, some background on what psychologists already know about susceptibility to injury:




  • Perceived vulnerability to sport-related injury is related to the proportion of time athletes wear protective equipment. If you think you are vulnerable you're more likely to protect yourself.


  • After athletes are injured they tend to be concerned about putting their body in a situation similar to the one in which their initial injury occurred; this could last for months after their return to sport.


Here's how the study went. The researchers looked at rugby players, a group that certainly knows what it's like to get injured. They examined two personality traits, neuroticism and global self-esteem. In this context, neuroticism is


the tendency to worry about one's health, to inflate perceptions of symptoms of disease and health threat, and to report a greater number of medical symptoms and complaints.
People who have high global self-esteem are likely to


engage in self-serving or self-protective cognitive distortions, which lead them to reject information that is inconsistent with their perceptions and opinions.


The researchers also gave the players a measure of perceived susceptibility to sport injury.

In addition to what was already known (that previously injured athletes worry about becoming re-injured) the researchers found that individuals who worry a lot about their health and the likelihood of becoming injured (high in neuroticism) tend to inflate perceptions of potential injury symptoms. Additionally, athletes with high global self-esteem seem to perceive themselves as less susceptible to injury than those with low global self-esteem.

Which leads to a very interesting phenomenon. Typically we think of high self-esteem as a good thing, psychologically protecting us against negative feedback or perceptions of failure (with high self-esteem we don't care as much about other's opinions that are inconsistent with how we view ourselves). However, self-esteem also changes how we perceive risk. By using cognitive strategies that allow us maintain a high level of self-esteem we may also be convincing ourselves that we are less vulnerable to injury. This could occur in spite of our engaging in higher risk behavior.

So high self-esteem could very well place athletes at risk of being injured or re-injured.

Think about it. If your ego (high self-esteem) is such that you believe you are invincible, you are far more likely to work-out when injured, ignore signs of injury, return to training prior to being fully recovered, take more risks, etc. All things that make you far more vulnerable to injury.


Given this, what can you do? Here's five things I'd suggest:




  1. Know thyself. First determine if you are high in global self-esteem -- be honest with yourself. It's not that having high self-esteem is a bad thing. In most circumstances it's not. If you are one to over-estimate your abilities remind yourself of this tendency often.


  2. Know your family of origin. Think back to how your family handled illness. Were you taught to ignore being ill (your appendix could be bursting and you were still sent to school) or were you someone that was keep inside at the slightest sign of a sniffle. If you're in the first category, keep in mind that you will most likely have a tendency to overlook signs of injury.


  3. Get yourself a trusted advisor. Find someone who can call you out. Someone who you will listen to when he or she tells you that you need to let an injury heal, or back off from training so hard, or stop taking risks. Then listen to him or her.


  4. Find yourself a good doctor who works with athletes. I can't recommend this enough. Form a relationship with a doctor who knows that you are an athlete and understands your need to "get back in the game" as quickly as possible. If you know your doctor wants you to train and compete as much as you want to, you are more likely to listen to him or her when he or she tells you that you're injured.


  5. Build recovery into your training schedule. I could write a whole post on the importance of recovery and how most athletes train right through their recovery days. Don't. Keep your ego out of it. Your body needs rest to rebuild and keep itself strong and free from injury.


As one who's sustained an injury or two (or more!) I can tell you they are no fun. Better to prevent them than have to recover from them. So have as much confidence in your ability to succeed as you can muster up, but listen to what your body tells you.



Reference: Deroche, T., Stephan, Y., Brewer, B. W., & Le Scanff, C. (2007). Predictors of perceived susceptibility to sport-related injury. Personality and Individual Differences, 43, 2218-2228.




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