How to Make a Comeback After an Injury
Making a comeback to tricking can seem overwhelming, especially after a serious injury. And the constant world’s firsts and viral tricking clips on Instagram don’t help, either—they only highlight the huge distance between where you are and where you want to be.
So as both a Doctor of Physical Therapy and tricking athlete who has been through a few setbacks, I wanted to share my personal and professional experience in returning from injury.
The first step is to make sure that you have no serious conditions. A good rule of thumb is that if you are concerned about your pain or issue, and are seeing little to no improvement, it may be time to seek medical evaluation.
Clear signs to seek attention include:
● Suspected sprains, strains, or tears (moderate to severe)
● Suspected breaks
● Loss of sensation or motor function
● Moderate to severe pain or discomfort, even at rest
● Unexplainable symptoms
● Your injury affects your life (ability to work, travel, or socialize)
If none of that applies to you (nice!), you need to make sure that you are both mentally and physically ready to return to tricking by asking yourself the following questions. Either seriously think about or write down your answers and see what you come up with!
1) Do you believe that you are mentally and physically ready to return to tricking?
2) Do you have a plan for continuing to rehab and prevent future injury not only to this area, but to your whole body?
3) Do you have a plan for holding yourself accountable during:
- Low motivation days
- Flare-ups or setbacks
- When you feel 100% but still need to keep conditioning
4) Have you pinpointed why the injury happened in the first place, and what you can do to avoid
this in the future?
- Examples: physical limitations, overuse, poor technique, progressing too rapidly
If you answered “yes” to these 4 questions, you are in a great head space! If not, it’s time for additional research and reflection, and this article will help. Putting you through a complete physical exam would be difficult to do in this article, but we have listed some areas to look at when testing yourself.
It is critical that we have near-symmetrical function, or limb symmetry, on one side versus the other. In the physical therapy world, any difference between sides of over 10% is considered an injury risk.
The more asymmetry there is between sides, the more likely we are to be injured. So look for symmetry between sides in the following areas.
Under each area, we have included one example exercise in the case of a knee injury or issue, with a link to a helpful video from the Trickstrong Instagram page.
- Strength – our ability to produce force
- Mobility – our active control over our range of motion
- Flexibility – the passive limits of our range of motion
- Endurance – our ability to resist fatigue
- Coordination – how well you can organize and sequence movement
● Power – your rate of force production
- Agility – ability to perform skilled and accurate movement
If there’s good symmetry between your injured and non-injured limbs, you’re on the right track! However, it is difficult to imitate the direction, intensity, and real-time forces you experience during tricking without actually doing it.
So progress slowly and intelligently in your return, taking weeks, if not months to build back to 100%. Progressing back into tricking is an art of its own. It takes patience, dedication, and long-term thinking. It’s so easy to get short-sighted and immediately go for your best tricks, but it cannot be stressed enough that the body will require time to adapt to the unique stresses that tricking places on it.
You want to return with confidence, while at the same time with respect for physiological healing time
Here is an example plan for someone who has been away from tricking for 2 months due to Jumper’s Knee, but has now passed all of the above tests without pain or limitation. This person has the goal of Tricking 3 times per week without issues.
Week 1:
● 1 Light to Moderate Tricking Session
● 1 Moderate to Heavy Strength Session
● 1 Light to Moderate Plyometric Training (focusing on takeoff and landing technique)
● Mobility work throughout week as needed (large mobility restrictions will need daily work)
Week 2:
● 1 Moderate Tricking Session
● 1 Moderate to Heavy Strength Session
● 1 Light to Moderate Plyometric Training (focusing on takeoff and landing technique)
● Mobility work throughout week as needed (large mobility restrictions will need daily work)
Week 3:
● 1 Light Tricking Session
● 1 Moderate Tricking Session
● 1 Moderate to Heavy Strength Session
● Mobility work throughout week as needed (large mobility restrictions will need daily work)
Week 4-5:
● 2 Moderate Tricking Sessions
● 1 Moderate to Heavy Strength Session
● Mobility work throughout week as needed (large mobility restrictions will need daily work)
Week 6-7:
● 1 Light Tricking Session
● 2 Moderate Tricking Sessions
● 1 Moderate to Heavy Strength Session
● Mobility work throughout week as needed (large mobility restrictions will need daily work)
Week 8-10:
● 2-3 Moderate Tricking Sessions (monitor recovery between sessions)
● 1 Moderate to Heavy Strength Session
● Mobility work throughout week as needed (large mobility restrictions will need daily work)
Week 10-12:
● 2 Light to Moderate Tricking Sessions
● 1 Heavy Tricking Session
● 1 Moderate to Heavy Strength Session
● Mobility work throughout week as needed (large mobility restrictions will need daily work)
And so on, meeting the eventual goal of being able to trick hard 3 times per week. If things aren’t going as well as you had hoped in one of the areas above, that’s OK! You now have a very powerful tool: awareness.
By knowing exactly where you are limited, you can address and improve upon those limitations, and in time, get back to killing the session.
And if you feel like you need more guidance in this area, check out my performance and recovery platform TrickStrong RX. My partner Han and I have combined our experience as both tricking athletes and Doctors of Physical Therapy to create a catalog of programs, podcasts, anatomy tutorials, mindset videos, workshops, and more.
Whether you check out RX or not, I hope you can apply the knowledge above and get back to the session stronger, faster, and more prepared. Good luck!
Neil Toussaint is the founder of TrickStrong. He is also a Doctor of Physical Therapy passionate about tricking, performing arts, health & wellness, travel, friends and content creation.
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