29 | Paralympic Gold Medalist Alana Nichols: Embracing New Identities
Release Date: 06/25/2020
156 | Coach Carrie Answers a Question: How to Cope with Shifting Timelines
The Injured Athletes Club
“ How do I deal with expectations around timelines?” —Every injured athlete, ever In season 8 of The Injured Athletes Club podcast, mental skills coach Carrie Jackson answers a question every other week about the mental side of overcoming injuries. And for our season finale, she tackles an issue that’s come up from more than one person: how to manage when recovery takes longer than you’d like. So many injured athletes have had the experience of latching onto an initial timeline given by a doctor, physical therapist, or other medical professional—then feeling let...
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155 | Volleyball Player and Dietitian Tatum Vedder on Nourishing Your Recovery
The Injured Athletes Club
“ Surgeries one through three, there is still this fear around weight gain and therefore restriction. And I think part of me wants to know, is that a major factor in why I didn't heal well? I'm not going to dwell on that or guilt-trip myself over it; it's in the past. But it was also an opportunity for surgeries four and onward, to say: ‘Let's take a different approach. Let's nourish to heal. Let's not feed to skate by.’” Tatum Vedder was heading into her last year of collegiate volleyball, playing in a co-ed tournament, when she took a rough landing and had to be carried...
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154 | Coach Carrie Answers a Question from Kat: Having Radical Honesty with Your Coach
The Injured Athletes Club
“ I’ve unfortunately faced a series of surgeries and setbacks over the last few years. While I feel like I have a supportive group of friends, I don’t feel like my primary coach has been that understanding of the mental toll that this has taken on me or how to navigate a game plan through my recovery, even though she’s successfully done that in the past with me as injuries have come up. She doesn’t feel approachable to talk to and rarely reaches out to me. While I know she isn’t my therapist, I feel like I should be able to have honest conversations with her. When I’m not...
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153 | Elite Runner and Coach Becki Spellman: Embracing Your Best Each Day
The Injured Athletes Club
“ It really helped me as a coach to be able to look at my athletes and remind them, it doesn't have to be about a PR, doesn't have to be about the best day you wanted, but it can be—if you're healthy—about the best day you have that day. And that can be celebrated, that can be fun, even if it isn't the outcome you would've ideally written in your book.” Becki Spellman has had a long, successful career in distance running—she qualified for her first Olympic Marathon Trials in 2008 and her fourth in 2020. In that time, she’s dealt with her fair share of setbacks, including...
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152 | Coach Carrie Answers Two Questions: Don’t Play the Self-Blame Game
The Injured Athletes Club
“With overuse injuries especially, how do you help injured athletes recognize what to take ownership for, and what was out of their control? For example, one's weightlifting form may have led them to injury. Shame and guilt can be common emotions here, which are not helpful to our recovery, but how do we recognize what causal factors to take ownership of in a healthy way?” —Clark “If a series of acute injuries are a consequence of a chronic condition, how can you ever live without fear of reinjury or, perhaps worse, self-blame? Asking for a friend.” —Jennifer In...
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151 | Paralympian Ryan Medrano on Visualizing Success—then Living It
The Injured Athletes Club
“ That's how I learn life. I look at it, I visualize myself doing it, and then I execute. And if it doesn't feel right, I can feel it. I can see it, almost like a third person's view. That's the way I've approached life; that's the way I've been able to really reel in on what I'm good at and what I'm not good at.” Ryan Medrano has faced his share of challenges—he was born with mild cerebral palsy, which caused motor and cognitive delays, and was often bullied as a child because of it. But as he learned to walk and read social signals, he gained knowledge about himself and the...
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150 | Coach Carrie Answers a Question from Kathy: On Having Patience for the Long Haul
The Injured Athletes Club
“ How do you stay patient when the doctor says you’re doing too much? Mentally I get so down.” —Kathy In season 8 of The Injured Athletes Club podcast, mental skills coach Carrie Jackson answers a question every other week about the mental side of overcoming injuries. This week, she empathizes with Kathy’s conundrum—most injured athletes aren’t happy with the pace of their recovery, because they don’t want to be injured in the first place. But patience is essential, and the way to cultivate it is to recognize it for the strength and power that it...
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149 | Hockey Player and Marathoner Thomas E. Smith on Becoming What’s Possible
The Injured Athletes Club
”What went through my mind—I was 19 at the time, my birthday was the prior month—was, oh my goodness, is my life over in terms of being able to live my dream? Because hockey, for me, wasn't just a sport. It was a gateway to do better in all facets of life.” doesn’t like the word “impossible.” After all, time after time, he’s beaten the odds. After a paralyzing spinal cord injury during a hockey game, some doctors didn’t think he would walk again—but he found a team that believed he could not only walk but skate. Nine months later, he returned to the ice. ...
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148 | Coach Carrie Answers a Question from Whitney: Rejoining the Group Ride
The Injured Athletes Club
“ When you're injured and beginning to rejoin group rides/workouts, how do you let other riders know you're not at 100%? I'm thinking specifically of gravel and mountain biking. I have trouble clipping out quickly, and am currently overly cautious. I want to ride in the very back, but sometimes there are other people ALSO trying to ride in the back. I know people don't want/need to hear my ‘woe is me' injury story, but I also don't want to be a hazard!” —Whitney In season 8 of The Injured Athletes Club podcast, mental skills coach Carrie Jackson answers a question every other...
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147 | Coach Carrie & Cindy Explore Your Identity
The Injured Athletes Club
“ When you give yourself permission to explore your identity, you will start to realize that being an athlete is an important part of who you are, but it is not all that you are. When you develop other areas of your identity, it can sometimes open up your performance in ways that were never available to you before.” As we discuss frequently in The Injured Athletes Club, injury brings a rollercoaster of emotions. But often, one of the most destabilizing feelings is the question of identity: Who am I without my sport? In this host-ful episode, Coach Carrie explains how common...
info_outlineBasketball, ski racing, sprint kayaking, surfing—Alana Nichols’ athletic career has brought her to the highest levels of a wide range of sports. Still, she tells us on this week’s show, as a Paralympian she often struggled to get the same care for her injuries as her able-bodied peers.
But fight she did, and her advocacy has carried over into her newer roles as president of the Women’s Sports Foundation and mother of baby Gunnar, who turns one year old in July (and whose dad is previous guest Roy Tuscany). For Alana, it all began when she came to terms with reality and set small goals. Eventually, they took her farther than she would have imagined, within sports and beyond them.
A huge thank you to Fluid Running H2GO, the only app-based deep-water running system in the world, for sponsoring this season of the Injured Athletes Club. CLICK HERE and use code IAC 30 to take $30 off the full system or the digital bundle.
In this episode, we discuss:
- How injuries are viewed in Paralympic sports and the added obstacles adaptive athletes face (5:42)
- How that connects to a bigger movement for access and equality (9:03)
- The way her initial spinal cord injury influenced the way she coped with subsequent injuries (10:15)
- How sports helped her through the process of adjusting to disability (13:38)
- Becoming a new mom, and how that required her to readjust to her identity all over again (16:26)
- Her last major injury, which led to her retirement from ski racing (19:18)
- Vicarious trauma and how that factored into her life and decision to retire (28:47)
- How lessons learned from injuries are helping her navigate the pandemic
- Her work with the Women’s Sports Foundation, and the way it’s transformed her even as she’s aiming to transform the world (36:44)
- The challenges women’s sports face in the wake of the pandemic and how they’re hoping to address them (42:15)
You can subscribe to The Injured Athletes Club on Spotify, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts, and if you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or a review in Apple podcasts. That helps other injured athletes find the show.
Resources/links we mention:
- Alana’s website, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook page
- The Women’s Sports Foundation website
To access more resources for injured athletes:
- Join The Injured Athletes Club mailing list, for weekly news and updates
- Join The Injured Athletes Club Facebook group, for support and camaraderie
- Email us at [email protected] with questions, guest suggestions, or other feedback
DISCLAIMER: This content is for educational & informational use only and & does not constitute medical advice. Do not disregard, avoid or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your health-care professional because of something you may have heard in an episode of this podcast. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult with a qualified medical professional for proper evaluation & treatment. Guests who speak on this podcast express their own opinions, experiences, and conclusions, and The Injured Athletes Club podcast hosts nor any company providing financial support endorses or opposes any particular treatment option discussed in the episodes of this podcast and are not responsible for any actions or inactions of listeners based on the information presented. The use of any information provided is solely at your own risk.