Why must your coach and physio be in communication with each other?
Unfortunately, training can result in injuries. However, the path back to training is often shortened unnecessarily due to a fundamental gap in communication between some key partners. The athlete has a responsibility to know what the best practice should be as well as holding each party accountable to it. Coach Soraya explores this sensitive conversation.
I think we can all agree that as a coach, my job is to help my athletes set and reach their goals. I think we can also agree that many factors will impact an athlete’s success against their goal. These include current fitness, training plan, nutrition, injuries, sleep, workload, family life, social life, other hobbies and many more. As a coach, I have to look at all those factors if I want my athlete to succeed, not just the training elements.
If you encounter an injury (or a niggle), your physio’s job will be to help you recover from that. To do their job, just like your coach, they also need the full picture. The more they know, the better they will be able to assess the problem and find the solution. They will want to know your sporting background, if you’ve had previous injuries, what brought on the problem, what your lifestyle is like, what your fitness/sports goals are…etc. You shouldn’t have a problem answering those questions – at least I hope not! They will also want to know how you are planning to achieve your goals, and whilst you may have a good idea of what the high-level plan is, your coach is better placed to have that conversation. It is equally important for the coach to know what the physio has assessed. The biggest challenge to online coaching is the fact we do not see you physically, and whilst numbers (power, speed, heart rate…) tell a lot of the story, they don’t tell us everything. They won’t tell us about any muscle imbalances, weaknesses or instabilities you might have (although they may highlight some)*. When the physio examines you, they will pick up on these things, and their assessment of your general “condition” (not only of the injury in question) is invaluable to your coach.
What happens if your coach and physio do not talk? You, the athlete, become the messenger and chances are, things will get lost in translation, and neither your coach nor physio has the full picture. As a result, there is a good chance that they make conflicting decisions (e.g. one may tell you to rest for a week, and the other might tell you to do light exercise and ice). This might not necessarily be because one of them made a mistake, but simply because they are assessing the situation with limited information. The most frustrating position we find ourselves in is in the transition between injured and fit. It isn't a binary switch from one to the other. "You can go running again" may be one of the most damaging phrases in the rehab lexicon. All too often, we have seen a situation where there is a gap between running training and a safe, strength and conditioning lead return to running programme. The athlete often finds themselves pushing forwards (the phrase "give them an inch and they will take a mile" comes to mind) and they may skip over some fundamental steps to be training which just sets them off on a path that will result in injury again.
Often athletes can concurrently train and manage an injury, but in the case of a pause to training, there will be a return which jumps through some crucial phases:
Injury fixing – this may be rest, setting, etc., but this is where we need to let the body heal if it is a bad injury
Address the cause – this may be identifying imbalances and correcting them. This will likely be specific and isolating exercises
Stability – Can the exercises add to your stability and movement, working automatically?
Ensure correct complex function and loading – if you have suddenly "switched your glutes on" you need to make sure they activate in more complex movements like lunges and add to your movement pattern, we are now starting to load the movement and get it ready for training.
A plyometric phase – most movements in sport are quick and therefore need to be effective in the sport. If you can lunge carefully and with good form and strength, that isn't the same as reaching for a tennis ball or even the simple activity of running!
A gradual return to your sport.
If you keep on getting injured or have a recurring niggle, then you are likely to have missed one or more of the above steps. This is partly because the middle part of this is athlete specific. For the general population, no pain and some isolated exercises will be enough. Athletes are different. They put themselves and their bodies through a lot more than the general population and so to match the demands, we need to ensure a more rigorous return to sport programme. Ensuring your coach and physio are communicating means that none of these steps is missed and the athlete can improve on a more sustainable path. This conversation is a critical professional conversation that should happen but sadly doesn't always.
What about other professionals such as nutritionists, strength & conditioning coaches, psychologists…etc.? The same reasoning applies. You, the athlete, should be at the centre of every decision. See your coach as the project manager bringing all these elements together to help you achieve your goals. If the nutritionist knows where the training programme is going, they will have a better understanding of how to manage the nutrition advice they provide. If the S&C coach is aware of races and training phases, you can both ensure that the training complements the strength work and is specific for the athlete. This will helps them both avoid injury and ensure progress is made in each area. If the athlete is working with a swim, cycle or run-specific coach, they have to engage with the triathlon coach, so everything dovetails together. At every point where there is a new specialist to add to the mix, the coach should be involved in the conversation. That other specialist should be engaged with the coach, otherwise, simply, they have not got the athlete's best interest at heart, and that results in a negative outcome for everyone and is unnecessary.
At Tri Training Harder we engage with any physio, nutritionist, S&C coach, discipline coach, psychologist, sports doctor etc. our athletes come into contact with. Sadly, we do not always see an automatic return of this engagement. This may be because people are busy or because egos get in the way. Therefore, it has to fall on the athlete to recognise what the high standards of service look like and set the expectations when working in these relationships and we will support them in this every step of the way. After all, they have the most to gain and the most to lose.
*luckily, thanks to the internet and our live sessions, we are now able to bridge that gap better. I have found that since teaching the live strength classes, I know my athletes much better and know what each of them needs to work on from a strength perspective. The very thin silver lining of this pandemic!
We’re here to help
Tri Training Harder are one of the leading Triathlon coaching providers in the UK, using our wealth of experience to unite scientific and technological research with already well-established and successful best practices, to create a formula for triathlon and endurance coaching that works.
The result is an honest, dynamic, yet simple new way of constructing an athlete’s training to allow them to reach their potential.
If you’re planning your next season, just starting out in the sport or are looking for extra guidance at the very top end of the field, we are here to help, and our coaches would be delighted to hear from you. You can contact us via the website, and one of the team will be in touch.