Listening Time — 21:06
An athlete with a torn anterior cruciate ligament faces a daunting rehabilitation challenge, with or without surgery. A significant amount of physical therapy is likely to be involved to regain strength and range of motion. But the athlete's body might not be the only thing that could benefit from treatment. Their thoughts and emotions could need rehabilitation as well.
Recent studies suggest that fear of reinjury is commonly cited among knee injury patients who don't return to their sport. The body may be willing, but the mind may not.
In this episode, sports psychologist Dr. Jack Lesyk, PhD, CC-AASP, and physical therapist Carol Ferkovic Mack, PT, DPT, SCS, CSCS, discuss how an athlete’s belief in his or her ability to recover from any injury, and their understanding of the process to get there, can be key to returning to sport.
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Dr. Jack Lesyk, PhD, CC-AASP, is the director of the Ohio Center for Sport Psychology and serves as sports psychologist for the Cleveland Cavaliers. An adjunct assistant professor of psychology at Cleveland State University, he has also served as the past president of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. Dr. Lesyk is on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Medicine and Sports and the Journal of Sport Psychology in Action, and has published his own book, Developing Sport Psychology Within Your Clinical Practice: A Practical Guide for Mental Health Professions.
Carol Ferkovic Mack, PT, DPT, SCS, CSCS, is a physical therapist at Cleveland Clinic’s Sports Health Center. She is the chair of Cleveland Clinic's "Match Fit" soccer performance enhancement and injury risk reduction program, as well as the chair of the Female Athlete Special Interest Group of the Sports Physical Therapy Section of the American Physical Therapy Association. She is also a member of the United States Olympic Committee's Volunteer Medical Staff.
