148 | Coach Carrie Answers a Question from Whitney: Rejoining the Group Ride
Release Date: 04/24/2025
180 | 3 Top Mental Tips for Dealing With Injury from Coach Carrie This Season
The Injured Athletes Club
“ You already got hit with an arrow, right? You got hit with the first arrow. Don't hit yourself with another arrow. Don't contribute to your suffering by judging yourself and being mean to yourself and creating narratives that are unhelpful.” We’re wrapping up our ninth season, after 7.5 years of podcasting. Don’t worry—the Injured Athletes Club isn’t going anywhere. But we are taking our regularly scheduled podcasting break. To send you into the off-season, we’re going back over three of Coach Carrie's clips that co-host Cindy found most valuable this year....
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179 | Coach Carrie and Cindy Talk the Talk (Again)
The Injured Athletes Club
“It’s so important to pay attention to how you are talking to yourself, because your words influence everything. So you really need to understand your self-talk and start to dive into it a little bit and know, OK, is the way I’m talking to myself right now—is that helping me or is that actually hurting me?” Imagine you’re walking past two sets of coaches and athletes on the tennis court, track, or soccer pitch. One coach is yelling at an athlete for her poor performance, telling her it’s all her fault and she’ll never improve. The other is offering encouraging words, letting...
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178 | Coach Carrie Answers a Question on Dating While Recovering from Injury
The Injured Athletes Club
“How do you date as an injured athlete when you identify strongly with specific sports and are drawn to others who also do those things … but you can't do them at this time? It becomes a source of anxiety and insecurity. Like, who would want to date a fellow runner who can no longer run? Or someone who seems to be perpetually in physical rehab?”—Evan Navigating relationships can feel difficult as you’re riding the roller coaster of injury recovery, Coach Carrie explains in this week’s listener Q&A. And there are good reasons to consider not dating for a while: For...
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177 | Olympic Ski Jumper Matt Petri on Pivotal Moments and Controlling the Controllables
The Injured Athletes Club
“ I got to the bottom after that jump and I started having thoughts of—’I've come this far, it's all gonna slip away if I can't compete and do well in this competition.’ And as I walked across to the bottom of the jump to go back up the stairs, I basically said, ‘I'm not gonna let that happen.’” The first formative moment of Matt Petri’s ski jumping career was probably when a coach convinced him to try the sport, rather than pursuing only alpine skiing. At that point, the event went from the scariest thing he’d ever done to something he couldn’t wait to do...
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176 | Coach Carrie Answers a Question on Embracing Change as a Masters Athlete
The Injured Athletes Club
“How do I adjust my training mindset now that I'm a masters athlete? I have a hard time accepting that my body is no longer 20. I'm 35, about to turn 36.” —Kelly Society often tells us that getting older is something to be feared and refused—think about the concept of anti-aging. For athletes, there’s an added layer of performance changes as we move into the masters categories. The problem, Coach Carrie says in this week’s Q&A episode, is that aging isn’t an optional activity. By fighting against its reality, we often keep ourselves miserable and stuck. If...
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175 | Elite Bench Presser Tony Carlino on Resilience, Recovery, and Raising the Bar
The Injured Athletes Club
“One thing that helped me—and I don't know if I really thought about doing this, I think I just did it when I was in the hospital—was just taking it a day at a time. Taking the day for what it is, not trying to look too far ahead. Obviously, you want to hit that goal of getting better, but take the day for what it is and what you can do that day.” As one of the world’s most accomplished equipped lifters, Tony Carlino is used to hoisting huge weights over his chest and on his back. But in 2019, he faced a challenge no gym session could have prepared him for: A bout...
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174 | Coach Carrie Answers a Question on Coping with Feeling Left Out
The Injured Athletes Club
“I’m feeling left out, although I know it’s not intentional. I joined a racing team this year, but have had to withdraw from several races already due to recovering from a bone stress injury. I did too much, too soon last year, and it finally caught me right after team training started—go figure! There’s another race this weekend that most of the team is running, and I’m always happy to support them, but it also sucks feeling like a wasted spot on the roster and not being able to attend any group runs or races while I’m recovering. Do you have any advice on handling...
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173 | Swimmer Lyn Jutronich on Surviving a Shark Attack and Moving Forward
The Injured Athletes Club
“ It's not going to be a linear journey, which is something that's been hard for me to wrap my head around. I have bad days and I have good days … I've had to learn that sometimes it's two steps forward, one step back.” Lyn Jutronich has been swimming since she was a child in the Chicago suburbs, and as an adult living near San Diego, she fell in love with the open water. But in November 2022, she experienced every swimmer’s worst nightmare when a juvenile great white shark attacked her. With help from her swimming partner, Lyn returned to shore. Her wounds healed in...
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172 | Coach Carrie Answers a Question on Pain Management and Recovery
The Injured Athletes Club
“I am nearly 8 months post-op after a femoral osteotomy to correct my knee. One of my biggest challenges is trying to figure out if my knee hurts because it ‘should’ as part of my recovery—or if it hurts because my body isn’t used to this level of training after 7 months of not doing much. Can you help?”—Aaron Sometimes, pain sends a clear signal to your brain that there’s tissue damage or danger. But when you’re recovering from an injury, those messages can get muddled, with an overactivated central nervous system firing off warnings even though there’s nothing...
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171 | Author and Athlete Dimity McDowell on the 27th Mile and Charting a New Path Forward
The Injured Athletes Club
“ You don't want to think about a friend dying or going through a divorce or anything like that—you kind of don't want to even put that energy in the world. Same thing with running. You don't want to think about what it looks like, but the reality is, most of us are going to have to think about that. Not everyone can stand on the podium at age 70.” Dimity McDowell was first on our back in 2022, when she’d just written a series of for (the late, great) Women’s Running magazine about what happens when you can’t run anymore. As she describes in her return...
info_outline“ 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 week about the mental side of overcoming injuries. This week, she addresses returning to sport, and how to do so safely and respectfully when other people are involved.
Coach Carrie applauds Whitney for her courage in getting back out there and her conscientiousness in being aware of others’ needs. Balancing it all out might take a little coordination and communication before the ride, either electronically or in person. This can feel uncomfortable at first, she acknowledges—but in the end, it’s the best way to clarify expectations and help everyone have the best day possible.
Resources/links:
A huge thank you to LEVER Movement, the exclusive sponsor of season 8 of The Injured Athletes Club podcast! The LEVER system is an innovative way to reduce your body weight, and the impact on your joints, while exercising on a treadmill. Use the code “TIAC20” to get 20% off your purchase.
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