Towards a holistic appreciation of the meaning of athletic injury and recovery
David J. Savage
University College Chester, Chester (UK)
Abstract
Injury can be a traumatic experience for some athletes in a psychological
as well as physiological sense. There is substantial evidence that confirms
the possible negative nature of injury experi-ence. This paper is an interim
report of an ongoing project aimed at deepening the understanding of injury
experience. In it rich, in-depth, holistic information is gathered in a
planned, systematic and extensive manner relating to the experience of
being injured and the strategies used to cope with it. Such detailed information
is not available in the extant literature. The general approach taken in
this research project is called a representative case-study. It has involved
in the order of 24 hours of co-investigation with a single international
athlete. A range of information gathering techniques were used in the project
including investigative interviewing, re-vivification and a rep-ertory
grid. This combination of methods enabled detailed narrative accounts of
the injury experi-ence and coping strategies to emerge and a more abstract
description of events at the level of per-sonal constructs. This report
will focus primarily on the repertory grid information. The grid itself
concerns events across time which occur in the period from the injury event
itself to the athlete's return to the full athletic involvement. A progressive
phases model of injury experience incorpo-rating functional and dysfunctional
coping strategies and intervention possibilities will be pre-sented, which
the grid data gives initial support, as does collation of previous research.
The re-flections of the athlete (co-investigator) are presented which confirm
that the non-invasive infor-mation collection strategies used in this research
project can in themselves constitute an appropri-ate therapeutic intervention
strategy with injured athletes. They facilitate effective review and learning
from the injury experience. Suggestions for further model development are
made.
Back to Berlin Abstracts