143 | Physical Therapist and Strength Coach Susie Spirlock: On Dropping the Comparisons and Training for Life
Release Date: 03/20/2025
168 | Coach Carrie Answers a Question: Tell Yourself Something Worth Believing
The Injured Athletes Club
“ My surgery was a success, and my doctors have given me the go-ahead to play again next season, but it's been over a decade since my initial injury, and I needed to hang up my skates. I've been sidelined for about 11 years. I was always a really aggressive player, and I've never been one to shy away from a confrontational situation on the ice. But after my injury, I'm worried that I'll be too nervous to really dig in and go full throttle when it comes to checking or anything that brings me too close to the boards. I DESPERATELY want to play again, but I know myself well enough to...
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167 | Coach Carrie and Cindy Label Your Emotions
The Injured Athletes Club
“ When you take a moment to pause and label the emotion you're feeling, you're asking your prefrontal cortex to get involved, which pulls the activation out of the amygdala where your brain is processing threat or no threat. Instead of being overwhelmed by the physiological experience of the emotion. It creates psychological distance so you can experience it from a less threatening vantage point.” Here at the Injured Athletes Club, we talk a lot about the roller coaster of emotions. Today, on this host-ful episode, Coach Carrie guides us through some of the ups and downs you’re...
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166 | Coach Carrie Answers a Question: Sustaining Motivation and Energy During Recovery
The Injured Athletes Club
“I just had my 12-week post-op follow-up with my doctor. It was a good appointment and things are pretty much where they are supposed to be at this stage. But I’ve been hitting a wall in my PT in terms of fatigue and overall enthusiasm. Most days, my energy is very low, and I’m trying to incorporate more rest and sleep in as much as possible. The doctor said at this stage—between month 3 and 12—is where the real work begins in terms of strengthening and getting back to where I was before, and hopefully stronger. So I’m wondering if you have guidance on keeping...
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165 | Author and Athlete Chelsey Klein on Grace, Survival, and Letting Go
The Injured Athletes Club
“ I've had to learn how to ask for help. I am grateful for my independence. I'm grateful for the fact that if I want something, I go get it. And my work ethic—I work in sales and my success of being an athlete, I owe it to that. But at the end of the day, there is that understanding of there's a difference between giving up and surrendering.” Chelsey Klein is a lifelong athlete—and no stranger to injury, which ended both her pursuit of gymnastics as a child and her collegiate volleyball career. But during the summer of 2020, during the height of the pandemic, she faced a...
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164 | Coach Carrie Answers a Question on Balancing Healing and Life Goals
The Injured Athletes Club
“ I’m feeling like my injury has really held me back in life. My first two years of college, I was trying to survive school while recovering from a car accident. I’ve needed every extension and have had many surgeries after that, which have affected my schooling and life in general. Now I’m ready to transfer from my community college to a university, and I don’t have all the right classes for the degree I’m going into. I feel like this injury has just ruined me, and I’m not sure what to do.” —Rylie Injuries can be devastating at any stage and time. But in some cases,...
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163 | Marathoner Leanna Scaglione on Running Through Life's Challenges
The Injured Athletes Club
“ Whatever you're feeling, whether it be anger, hatred, sadness, disappointment—it's okay. You're allowed to feel those things. That is valid. But just know that this situation— yes, NF is a lifelong diagnosis, and not having a cure, it does change your life trajectory a little bit. But it doesn't dictate how you have to live your life.” Leanna Scaglione was just 16 years old when what the aspiring ballerina thought was an injury from dancing turned into something she never could have imagined—surgery to remove a spinal tumor that left her temporarily unable to walk. Soon...
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162 | Coach Carrie Answers a Question: Rebuilding Trust in Your Body
The Injured Athletes Club
“How do you navigate phantom pains and constant re-injury fears after recovering from a bone stress injury?” —Marija Fear is one of the brain’s ways of protecting the body when it’s injured. But often, our anxiety lingers long after it’s useful. Our bodies and minds don’t always recover at the same rate, Coach Carrie explains in this week’s listener Q&A (that’s why deliberately working on your mental skills is so important!). Phantom pains and fears of re-injury are totally normal after a bone stress injury, she points out. To reset your nervous system and...
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161 | Triathlete and Author Roderick Sewell on Defying Odds and Creating a Legacy Beyond Sports
The Injured Athletes Club
“ Representation does matter. Because I've been to Zambia, Ethiopia, and Kenya with this same team, and when they see somebody who looks like them and is also walking on prosthetics … this child might be 18 and has never had a prosthetic. Now they're like, ‘Oh, I have the motivation to not only try it, but know that I can live a normal life.” On Oct. 12, 2019, marathoner Eliud Kipchoge the two-hour barrier in the marathon distance. The next day, his compatriot Brigid Kosgei the official women’s marathon world record, running 2:14:04 in Chicago. Between the two, another...
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160 | Coach Carrie Answers a Question: Handling Unwanted Advice
The Injured Athletes Club
“The most frustrating thing is when older women in their 70s and 80s keep pestering me when I’m injured. I call them the ‘I-told-you-so ladies.’ I feel like they’re giving me unsolicited advice and discouraging me to go back to lifting. Sometimes their comments hurt. One lady is a retired bodybuilder and a personal trainer in her 80s who had a hip replacement and the other lady is just an average Joe who doesn’t lift weights but got a knee replacement. Please help me how to deal with those two! I just hate it when people in general give me unsolicited advice.” —Nicole ...
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159 | Paralympic Athlete and Mental Coach Lacey Jai Henderson on Grief, Retirement, and Growth
The Injured Athletes Club
“ I think this is also what helps with the athlete transition—and even when you're dealing with injury and you're going to recover—is your relationship to the sport. Because that's what I realized: There's this feeling of loss and grief, and it's like somebody died, but at the same time, it doesn't really actually have to be like that. I've learned that sport's always gonna be in my life … but my relationship with it changes.” For years, Lacey Jai Henderson found joy and purpose in sport. Not long after losing her leg to cancer at age 9, she was enthralled by the movie Bring...
info_outline“ The biggest change that I've had to make in myself is, you don't always have to be progressing. I feel like there's this huge push to be able to run faster, run farther, lift heavier, just do more all the time. But it doesn't necessarily have to be that way to reap all the benefits of health and fitness that come along with cardio and with strength training.”
Physical therapist and strength coach Dr. Susie Spirlock has always been a healthy, active person. But after she got sick with COVID in the fall of 2020, everything changed; her resting heart rate soared, she lost fitness and muscle mass, and her missing sense of smell and taste made it difficult to eat.
Some—but not all—of those symptoms faded as she recovered, and she had to work her way through the complex medical system before getting a startling new set of diagnoses. At the same time, she was starting her own virtual physical therapy and rehab practice, Move Your Bones, and posting educational content on social media.
All this made for a lot of cognitive dissonance and self-doubt. But step by step, with flexibility and grace, she rebuilt her fitness routine to meet her biggest goals: Training for life. Although the physical and psychological challenges aren’t over for her, she’s learned to adapt and thrive, and her practice teaches others with injuries and illnesses to do the same.
Resources/links:
- Dr. Susie’s Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube
- The website for her practice, Move Your Bones
- How to Safely Exercise With POTS, According to Experts: an article Cindy wrote, quoting Dr. Susie, for SELF
- Navigating the Medical System webinar
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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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.