How to Return to Basketball After a Knee Injury Safely

Episode 56 | Basketball, Body, and Mind

This episode was a spontaneous recording during the camp in the Czech Republic. I decided to share how to return safely to basketball after a knee injury (usually ACL). To do that, we need to attack three things: basketball, body, and mind. I wanted to make it very practical, so feel free to download the guide, which can be found in the description below.

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Free return-to-court guide (5-phase PDF) — https://basketball-body-and-mind.kit.com/56f8657f71

• Ep. 9 — Mindset Training For Basketball Players, with Kerdu Lenear — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-9-mindset-training-for-basketball-players-with/id1783540921?i=1000697544138

Connect with me:

Instagram — @balticmove

Website — www.balticmove.net

Transcript

The Three Rehab Priorities

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Body, you have to work on the body physically, you have to train one leg, eventually do the one leg exercises. Gradually expose yourself to basketball, start very easy, download the guide that is in the show notes. Do not ignore the mind. Mind is the third thing that you need to work on if you want to be successful at rehabbing. This podcast is for youth basketball players, their parents, and the coaches who develop them. In every episode, we cover topics that determine your success. We talk basketball, body, and mind. I am Stan, strength and conditioning coach and physiotherapist, working with youth basketball athletes around the world. If you are serious about your development and you want to succeed in basketball, this podcast is for you. Let's get it.

Camp Context And Safety Disclaimer

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Basketball Body and Mind. I don't know if you are watching or if you are listening, but maybe you can hear that the sound or video quality is different. So it's because I am in the camp right now, but really wanted to create this episode and uh share with you what I have uh uh noticed. So before we start, a quick disclaimer that this episode is just for the educational purposes and it's based on my experience, and this is just general information. It is not medical advice for your specific injury because every knee injury, every surgery in general, every timeline, everything is individual and everything is uh different. And you have to always follow your own surgeon and your own physiotherapist and make sure that you have cleared uh that you are cleared before you start loading uh the knee or uh before you start going back on the court and return to basketball. So, just like this quick disclaimer because I will be sharing some advices and some of my personal uh takes on uh specifically on the ACL and specifically on the knee injuries, but more we'll be talking about the ACL because that's I have the most experience with uh compared to the other type of knee injuries.

The Knee Brace Wake-Up Call

SPEAKER_00 2:23

But I have had uh knee dislocations, uh kneecap dislocations like uh subluxation. I have had a kneecap rupture uh type of injury rehab and many ankle, um many knee kind of ligament sprains or just just in general knee pains. So, what uh triggered me to talk a little bit uh about this was that we were doing one drill in here in the camp, and uh one guy was wearing the knee brace and was maybe third day into the camp, and uh we were doing some lateral jumps, and the guy just could not like jump and he broke down. Uh, and I thought it's the knee that is uh bordering him. And uh eventually he told like that six months ago he had a ACL uh partial rupture, and uh he has not done a contact before, and uh yesterday we did like like day before we did like 45 minutes of the contact, so he is not trusting the knee. Uh he doesn't feel the knee pain, but he's not trusting the knee, he's afraid to jump and do all these uh exercises that we are doing. So I'm happy that he told me, I'm sad that he told me. Um, he could have told me way before. So I could have managed it better. But what it triggered for me is that like for me, it's obvious. I feel that is like common sense that whenever we start doing the contact, whatever we start doing the exercises, we start like step by step, slowly, slowly, slowly moving up and collecting more minutes, more load, and so on. But it seems that that common sense is not common. Maybe some of you would like to come back on the court right away, and you would like to uh go back where you were right away, and uh this is not the case with whichever type of injury we are going to talk, it's not the case, and um we need to take it step by step. And uh another second thought that came to my mind when I was listening, um when I was talking to him was that it's the fear he did not have any pain, and it was only the fear that was there that he will have an injury again, and we will talk later about this, but um thinking like seeing that, and I was thinking like it's a great lesson that we could really talk with the people who listen to this um episode, and uh, I'm not the one who is like I don't know, let's say guru in uh ACL rehab or in the knee type of injuries rehab. I have had uh clients working online, some in person, that we have um you know rehabbed, and uh players are like from age 15, maybe even 14, that the guy was like, or like already turning to 15, all the way up to like 20 and more. But um maybe someone who is very experienced, you might disagree, or you might add a little bit more to the you would add a little bit more to the equation, uh, but I will say, but um this is my take, and I said uh at the very beginning, like take this as educational for the educational purposes only, not for something that you have to blindly follow and do.

Basketball Body Mind Framework

SPEAKER_00 6:08

So we will be talking about um three topics when we are talking about the rehab, and we will be talking about basketball, we will be talking about body, like weight room, and we will be talking about, if you guessed it right, about the mind. We'll be talking basketball, body, and mind, three different, let's say, perspectives, rehabs, uh, that they need to blend and they have to come all together in order for you to uh have the rehab uh done well and the rehab that will be successful because it can be uh depending on the research you will read, but some researcher researchers can say it's like 55% that you will come back to professional sport uh at a very high level, but you know you can find articles saying 80%. So yes, so that's why we'll be talking about um this. And as I said, I'm not like top ACL uh rehab specialist, I have had my own experience not tearing but rehabbing the ACLs, and um let's start with the one.

Five Phases Back To Basketball

SPEAKER_00 7:21

So let's start with uh number one, let's talk about the basketball. And uh the question would be when I'm allowed to uh play play or trade basketball. I would say like right away. I don't know if you have seen Lizort uh when he had uh I think it was like um Tibia fracture. So he was sitting on the bench and he was doing already like some form shots under the basket. So whenever you can introduce uh the earliest you can introduce the basketball, uh like just seated shooting, if it doesn't cause you any pain, if somebody is rebounding for you, do it, do it. I believe it will be good for your mind, also, not only for your basketball skills, but for the rehab and that you will be involved with the team. But if we would talk about um in general, like when I can do standing exercises, whenever you can walk normally, you can start, you know, stand and dribble. You would not go after the basketball if you you know lost the ball, you would not um jog, you would not do anything, you just stand and dribble. That would be one thing. You can sit and dribble. So I believe the sooner you introduce the ball, uh the better, but has to be limitation, has to be some um constrictions in order for you not to make any more injuries and not to uh kind of make something bad to your knee, so you need to do a second rehab, maybe even second injury. So that's what we do in Lithuania. We knock on wood three times. Uh but uh there's no time, you can come back right away. You can come back right away if um if you are able to sit in one place and you are feeling mentally that you want to go in the court and you are just sitting and dribbling, perfect. I believe it will be good. But now let's assume that you are able to walk and this is if you can download a free guide that I am using for uh coming back on the court. So you just have to look for the link below. If by the time you are listening, uh there is no link, uh, check in a week or two uh whenever the podcast was published, uh, because it takes time a little bit to upload and it will set up everything. So, yes. So we talk about five phases that I have for someone who is coming back on the court, as you can see in if you can see in the PDF, you see that phase one is that we are back on the court and we are touching the basketball, we are walking with the basketball, uh, but we're not dribbling yet. We're not dribbling yet unless it's seated. So you can walk, you can spin it around, you can do different kinds of um exercises or movements with the basketball. Uh, you're just getting used to it. Okay. Phase two would be something that you start walking, you start easy jogging, but only straight lines. No change of direction. If you lose the ball, you don't quickly change direction, you slowly move and kind of turn and then continue. Of course, it's not uh so uh what would be the word, it's not so vulnerable that you would be making one change of direction and you would uh turn your you would tear your ACL, but we still are being precautious not to or cautious not to uh have any other type of tweak. Okay. Uh phase three, but it can be like two weeks, it can be four weeks, it can be six weeks, that phase, how long it lasts. Then phase three, you are starting to do a little bit of cutting. Uh you would do first jumps on the basketball court, everything two legged uh would be, and uh it's hard to judge how much, how little you would need to go, but you would just need to go slow, you know. Like you can do um uh all the drills that are showed in that are written in the guide. So please follow that, but always start slow, always go with low intensity, and the goal is in each phase the goal first when you enter new phase, when you start new exercises, is not to do it high intensity, but to collect more repetitions, so we get more reps, more load through that, and then we are raising the intensity of each phase. So, this is how uh we do. So you can do any basketball drills with change of direction, uh, you can do jump shots, uh, you are able to jog jog and um rebound your own um shots for for your for yourself, but still no um hard cutting change of direction agility uh exercises there at the end of the phase. We start implementing and going almost full kind of intensity. Okay, so phase four, another six weeks or another two months, depending on uh your own timeline, and we can enter phase four where you can do everything, you can do everything except contact. So you will have you can play 510, uh, you do three on oh, uh, you can do any skill sessions, and your knee should react well to this. Maybe it will be a little bit of swelling right after, but the next day you should be feeling fine. So this is very important. This is, as I said, everything except contact that we are able to do, and then another two, maybe four weeks, again, depending on how your body reacts, but minimum is like two weeks that you do um back-to-back basketball team practices. Uh, and yes, we need full court that we are going to do uh but five on zero, and then five phase five A, because we have five A and five B. Uh, so five A is the one where you return to full practice, but we start with half-court drills only, so you can go starting one-on-one contact, three and three contact, five on five contact, and within two weeks, if you are if your body and knee is reacting well, then you introduce uh 515 after those two weeks, you introduce 515 full court, no games, only practices. And again, as I start stated at the very very beginning, the most important thing is that you go step by step and slowly introduce that contact. You can go five minutes one day, you're feeling fine, next day we go ten minutes, next day you go 15, and uh so on. It doesn't have to be five, maybe it will be 10 the first time you will play, then maybe it'll go to 17, and then it will go to 20. So it doesn't have to be five, five, five, everything, but it's easy rule to follow. So you know you set up five minutes and you just have that five minutes, and then you just progress over those two weeks, and then as I said, you improve you improve you're feeling fine, you can increase the intensity, and you are going 100% and you're playing normally, and it's been maybe nine months or maybe 12 months, or maybe 16 months after your um injury that you had surgery, maybe this way would be better to say. And 5B is when you start playing, when you start playing games, only then, if your knees reacting well, only then you are allowed to play basketball games. But again, even though like we have played five on five and your knees reacting well, we still go easy, meaning we still go five minutes of the game, and next day you go ten, and you go, of course, you go right away um after the warm-up. So you have to be a starter, or maybe you starter off the of the quarter, because I don't want you to sit for five minutes and then you go and play last five minutes. No, you have to start the quarter uh in order to have a good warm-up, and then you go and play and start five minutes. Next game you finally play eight or ten, then you play twelve, fifteen, and so on. And this will take you anywhere, as I said, from nine to sixteen, eighteen months, uh, depending on how fast uh you it's the goal is like we all talk at the end, but the goal is not to get there fast, goal is to get there safely. This is the only thing that we care about, and uh whichever we whatever we phase we're talking, uh to summarize, take it slowly, take it slowly, increase it, progress it slowly. Uh, first we are getting repetitions and then we are increasing the intensity.

Weight Room Rehab From Day Three

SPEAKER_00 16:37

If we're talking about the body, we're talking about the weight room. Um we, when we do rehab, as soon as like three days after the surgery, we start moving the knee. There is a special machine that can bend and extend your knee, and you start with like 30 degrees, let's say, of motion, you set it up, and then for an hour a day, it's being moved. Okay, so this is uh this is something that we start. We start to do some electrical stimulation also on the quad quadriceps muscle. Uh we do some uh heel kind of knee extensions where you contract your muscle, like you're seated on the floor, and you just contract your muscle, you get that muscle mind connection, and you just continue. The goal of that early rehab is to get your full extension of the knee. We really don't want to lose it. Uh, we want to what we want to lose is the swelling, we want to uh reduce the swelling, uh, we want to get that quad firing. So we are using electrical stimulation and thinking about contracting the uh quad, and we want to introduce movement, but again, slowly, slowly, okay, because the graft, uh the new ligament in your bone, it needs to heal, it needs to, let's say, connect to the bone. So we need to protect it. So that's what we do. Um, we start within like three days after the surgery that we start moving. Then one week after, you can do some leg raises uh sideways, um seated, uh, you can extend while while you're laying on your stomach, you you extend your um leg backwards to work a little bit on the hamstrings. Um, calf works for uh the injured side if you are allowed to stand on that leg. So, but you're not standing on one leg, we're standing on two legs, but you are allowed to maybe do the uh calf raise. Some of you maybe within like a week, you will not use any crutch, any crutches and crutch. Um, yes, because maybe everything is going well, and you just had a ACL um let's say repair, and that is it. Maybe you don't need to crutch use crutches anymore because you are able to uh you're allowed to step on that, just talk to your uh surgeon. Okay, but keep in mind that only one leg is injured, another leg we push. We can do single leg squats while holding on to let's say TRX for the balance, so we don't um actually lose the balance and step, make a step with the injured leg. But you can do single-leg squats, single-leg deadlifts, um all the machine work you can work on that, like knee extension, hamstring curls. You can keep pushing that leg because we when we will be allowed to train the injured leg, we don't want to have two legs that are weak. It's much easier, will be much easier for us to rehab the leg that one is stronger and one is weaker, because we can do um two times, or sometimes you do even three times more for the injured in order to catch up, and we continue training that uh not injured leg. So rehab will go faster, one, because we will have only one leg that is weak, not two, and second, when you are training one limb, either upper body or lower body, the other limb is by a nervous system, is getting load also. So the loss of the muscle or of the strength of the power will be less, even though you do not train the injured side, but you train the other side. So that's another reason why we need to keep on training. And maybe some of you will say, But Stan, like my I injured my let's say left leg, and my right leg is my stronger one. So now if I will push the right leg again, um I will have disbalance. You will have disbalance either way, because one will be weaker and you will be limping or jumping on one leg. You will have that disbalance either way. But as far as like I have experienced and I have talked with the physiotherapists and with the coaches who are rehabbing, they all train the other leg. Because, as I said, for those two reasons. One is that we don't want to have two weak legs when we will start uh rehabbing, and the second is that the other side, the injured side, will get the load from the nervous system if we are training. So that's the early rehab. You can do everything for you know, not injured side, we can do core, maybe for the core exercises, you will keep one leg always the injured leg always straight, and the other one you can do your I don't know, crunches, toe touches, um plank not early, but later you might be able to do the planks uh also. Maybe you will put 80%. Of weight on not injured and 20% on the injured. It really depends what your surgeon and what your physiotherapist allows you to do, but that could be one thing. But as I said, for early rehab, the goal is to calm it down and wake the muscles up. So that's what we do. And for two, three weeks, maybe your exercises will be everything for the injured side, for the injured side, will be everything laying on the floor, all the leg raises, all the um miniband work, the calf raises, all of these exercises. Then if we go to mid-rehab is when we start bending the knees. So we start uh working depending on how much range of motion we are allowed to do. Maybe we do still step-ups with just one leg, and then we do squats for both legs, because uh the other leg, the injured leg, is not able to do a step up. But uh like there's like so many exercises that you could do, but think that your body will want to if you're doing bilateral, because that will be the first ones that you will be able to do. Bilateral meaning standing on two legs, and your body will shift naturally to not injured side more because it's used to and it feels that it is aligned, aligned when it is on one side more than the other. So that's why you really need to do that. Somebody would watch you while you do that exercise, for example, squats, um, because uh or watch yourself into the mirror when you do that, and uh that you would be aligned and you feel um which leg is working more. If you feel mostly not injured side that it's working, it's a clear sign that you are standing more on the other leg, or maybe that exercise is still too hard for you to do and you're not trusting the leg. Either physical limitation or mental limitation. If it's mental limitation, as I said at the very, very beginning, you have to get over it. You need to move on that injured side and a little bit more and keep on working. If it is physical limitation, you have to regress or do lateralization and a little bit different exercises, exercise in order to uh strengthen the muscle. Because after the training session, you really want to feel the quads, you really want to feel the hamstrings or the adductors, glutes of the injured leg that they have worked. If you do not feel it and you feel just one side uh which is not injured, it's not good. You will have a little bit or a lot, depending on how much you will do and how much the load will collect. Uh, you have you will have that muscle pain. It's most likely impossible uh to do like first session so little that you will not feel it. Usually they will have a little bit, but I cannot tell you specific exercises uh for uh what you need to do. It really depends. It's much harder uh to pick the excess exact exercises compared to the basketball uh drills that you are allowed to do, because it will depend how much of knee swelling you have, how much of the uh range of motion in the knee you have without knee pain, how much of um load you had before the injury, how much of the early rehab you did. So it's so much, but think about that that the second phase in that mid-rehab, you want to build the strength back. We don't want to jump, we don't want to um like do some like crazy exercises uh of single leg. You start always with two-legged exercises and you work with tempo, you go a little bit slower down, a little bit slower up, reduce the range of motion, and then you are increasing the uh contraction speed of the muscles, you are increasing the difficulty of the exercises, you are moving more and more into the single leg type of work. And eventually what we do later in the rehab is that we do one to three ratio. So we do three sets or like six sets for the injured side and two sets for not injured side, so it can be three times as much for the injured side, and one to three uh is for quads, one to three ratio can be for hamstrings, but for hamstrings, usually we go one to two because hamstrings are weaker, usually in general, so we don't want we don't need any more uh much more for the hamstrings because both usually sides are weaker. So for quads, you more often we will go one to three ratio, and for hamstrings, usually we'll go one to two. So just keep that in mind. But you start with I said bilateral exercises, two-legged exercises, and then you really need to move to single leg exercises for the rehab. I wanted to say impossible, and uh I'll say this: I don't think it's possible to do the rehab without single leg exercises. If you just do squats, deadlifts, um bilateral jumps, and uh leg presses and knee extensions and hamstring curls, always with two legs. I don't think it's possible. Um, yes, so this is my take. And then late rehab is of course where you implement, you can implement uh basketball together because when you are able to squat, when you are able to do like bilateral exercises, you will be able to do some uh walking on the court and uh doing some stationary ball handling uh drills and

Power Progression And Return Tests

SPEAKER_00 27:57

so on. So for that early or mid-rehab, for that late rehab, we start doing a little bit of power, little bit of landings, uh, because this is where we want to bridge the gap. And bridge the gap meaning that we start everything in controlled environment, which is weight room, and then we move to the passable court. So if you have not done bilateral jump, two-legged jump in weight room, you're not allowed to do two-legg jumps in on the court. And uh you need to do quite many of the two-legg jumps because whenever you will go in the court, you will shoot hundred times, that will be hundred times of jumping. So I'm not saying you that you need to do hundred times of jumping in the weight room, and only then you can do hundred times jumping on the court, hundred times shooting. But you will need to do, and we can go three sets of 15 uh jumps of the low intensity that we go, and we will not start with that. We always start like two sets of four, two sets of three um jumps, and then if it's fine, we go to three sets. If it's fine, next training session we go three sets of five, so we 15, and we just go more and more and more again. As you can see, we are going back to this step-by-step approach that we just increasing the repetitions, amount of repetitions slowly, and we start with a very low intensity, and then within weeks or months, we are increasing the height of the chump. But first, we always go with the repetitions. Of course, then running, jumping, uh, change of direction exercises that we want to do, and we're looking also for symmetry between sides. You will do your tests depending on the physio, depending on the surgeon that he or she recommends you to do, but without do without starting the power, the single leg jumps, uh, forward, lateral, vertical, single leg. I'm talking, you will not be allowed to change direction. So, first you have to change direction on the in the weight room, and only then you will be allowed to change direction on the court. Because on the court it will be less, let's say, controlled, and it will be more chaos. So, first we control everything, how many times, what is the speed, and only then we are allowed or cleared to go and play uh basketball or train basketball. So a few sets, uh few things, a few tests that you can check. Uh, they are pretty simple, but you can just vertical jump forward, vertical jump, one leg, vertical jump uh lateral, compare the sides, three jumps forward, single leg, and stick the landing, compare left and right, see how your landing is, which is very important. Don't look only into the distance, how far you can jump in three jumps, but look how well you are able to land. Um, yes, I did not mention this, but you can record yourself from the side, and when you are landing from box, let's say 10 or 20 uh centimeters, uh, we go from 30, but not right away. But when you land, you really want to see nice soft landing rather than a stick or leaning forward in the landing. You want to I want to see that you are using hips in the landing, so you're sinking into the hip. So your knee travels forward, your hips moving back, and your chest or torso is aligned with the tibia. So when you're watching from the side view, so this is one that is very important for me as a checklist that I can see that the person is loading the knee, is loading the hip in the landing, and the landing is let's say soft or like kind of bouncy, if you will.

Fear Of Reinjury And Kinesiophobia

SPEAKER_00 32:08

And the last part is the mind, uh, very short, but it's very important because being afraid, being afraid of uh getting injured can mean that you are like there is an article saying that it's 13 times more likely for you to get injured because you are afraid, and they're using the scale, it's called like TSK scale, TSK 11, uh Tampa scale of uh kinesiophobia, so like afraid of the movement, and you can do it yourself. And if you score uh more than 19 points, you're like 13 times more likely uh to tear it again. But uh the caveat is that uh the study is like with just a pilot study, it's not a big uh study that was done, but just for use to keep in mind, and even if it's like not 13 times, but the it's like two times or five times, you know, so it's not that big as 13, but it's still big, it's like twice as likely to turn it uh to tear it again, just because you are afraid, and uh how we can uh train that afraid. Of course, there's like some of them uh let's say visualization training that we can do and check the episode number nine, I believe, with Kerdu Lenar, like a sport um like a she's not a sports psychologist, but like a mindset coach, and we were talking about that visualization, so you can visualize how you are doing the movement that you are afraid and everything is fine, and maybe you were doing a layup or like uh once you stop and you tore your ACL and you're thinking, you're visualizing how you are doing that, and you're doing it without injury. But it's one way is to visualize it, and then you need to practice it. You will need to practice whichever type, okay, if it's like some kind of weird landing or somebody fell down on you, and that's how you tore your ACL or any other type of knee injury. Of course, we will not do that. But if you find some kind of type of jump, or if you find some type of exercise, or like some type of like a skill, basketball skill movement, that you are afraid to do it full intensity, practice with less intensity, do more reps and increase the intensity until you're not afraid to do that movement, unless, as I said, it's something like crazy that uh we don't want to do that. Okay, but you need to practice that because if you will be afraid of something, that might happen, that might happen in the court, and then your body will somehow change the um let's say the movement just in order to avoid that movement, and then maybe instead of stepping with your uh injured side, which was left, you will step with your right side and it will be awkward movement, and then it will be another type of injury, or maybe same type of injury, but for another knee. That is also very likely because if you did not watch yourself into the mirror and you are still landing on one side more than the other, you will be loading one side more, and that side can be overloaded, and eventually it will lead to the injury. That's why we need someone to watch us, we need someone to assess us in order to uh move uh forward.

Common Myths And Team Identity

SPEAKER_00 35:39

So, first uh let's talk a little bit about some uh myths. So, number one is that uh it takes like six months. You can be cleared to play basketball in six months, but by a doctor, but it doesn't mean that you are ready to play basketball because in basketball you need to do many things. Maybe your graft is healthy and uh it's attached to the bone and everything is perfect, and you can play basketball, but you're not ready. You have not done all the movements, you have not played one-on-one contact. And imagine if your doctor says you have not done any of the contact, and your doctor says, Hey, you know what? You are clear to play, and you go right away five five on five, thirty minutes. No, always step by step, do not skip any steps. Uh, talk to the surgeon first. If they are they say you're clear to play, talk to the physiotherapist. Uh they need to assess you, take it seriously. Okay, it's very, very important. Another thing is that you will tear it again 100%. I mean, it's impossible to know 100%, but if you are afraid that you will tear it again, uh, it's something to work on the mind. It's very important. Do not ignore the mind. This would be um that the myth that you don't need to uh kind of work on that, it's just the physical part. No, it's not only the physical part, it's always that's why this podcast is called basketball body and mind. You need to work on everything in order to be the best basketball player, you need to work on those three things. In order to be the best, to have the best rehab, you have to work on all three on of on all of those uh three things. And the last is that uh you need to come back to basketball, you cannot uh how to say, like stay away from basketball and uh not to be part of the team. Part of the team is part of the rehab because it's at first you will be only the person who will be chairing for the team, you will not be able to do anything else. Then you will be someone who will be able to do some stationary dribbling, you will be part of the team, and then you continue with the rehab. Then you will be someone who will be allowed to do some easy skills, so you will be part of the team. Then, on top of that, you will be someone you will be allowed to do some 5-1-0, so then you continue and doing doing those exercises, you're part of the team. Because basketball, I don't know if you are a parent listening or if you are a player listening, but basketball is everything for a basketball player, it's their identity. If you ask person, basketball player, who they are, they will say, I'm a basketball player. So having said that, having the identity tied to you as a basketball player, imagine I take that out. How difficult for you would be if you have nothing else but basketball. Of course, maybe you will find some other things to do when you are injured. Um, maybe you will find the later, you will find the benefits, you will see the um bright side of that. But if that is taken from you, you need to bring it back, even though you don't want to see uh players maybe you're mad at the world and that this injury has happened to you, but you need to come back. You can grieve or grieve for like one day, one week. Um but if I were you, I would ask myself, how many days or how many weeks am I allowed to be sad about it? Whatever you decide, say one week, perfect, after one week you come back, okay? Because that is important for your mind to be involved in a team. If possible, you have a big bus that you are traveling to the games, go to the games. If it's a small bus and you it's very uncomfortable, don't go, it will be worse for you. But whenever you're allowed to, you know, be part of the team, be. That would be uh my advice.

Simple Summary And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 39:51

So to summarize in three things, I would say uh very simply number one, you have to work on the basketball. So gradually expose yourself to basketball, start very easy, download the guide that is in the show notes. Number two, body, you have to work on the body physically, you have to train one leg, eventually do the one leg exercises. Uh, and um number three, and also like the ratios, everything like there are so many exercises uh that you are able to do like even like right away, like one week after the surgery. And number three is do not ignore the mind. Mind is the third thing that you need to work on if you want to be successful at rehabbing, because everything, everything is connected. So thank you for listening. I hope you liked it. And if you did, be sure to subscribe, be sure to like it, and share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. This is the best way to support us. But for now, keep training basketball, body, and mind.