Two weeks ago I was contacted by a young lady who is a goalkeeper for a London Premiership Football (Soccer) team.
Her problem started last season where she sustained an ankle sprain. She saw her local doctors who correctly diagnosed the injury and also had access to the mens team's physios who helped with the recovery.
Although the sprain healed she was still getting some discomfort whilst playing football, yet managed to finish the season but had to miss vital training sessions to let the ankle recover after each game.
She felt absolutely no pain at all when walking, so during the close of the season she had come to the conclusion that the injury had finally recovered. That was until their first pre-season training session at the beginning of this month. After only a few minutes of jogging she had extreme pain and had to sit out the rest of the training session.
This was obviously worrying for her, having the pain reoccur so soon after starting training she was very concerned as to whether she would be able to play football this coming season.
She revisited the doctors who confirmed that this was the after effects of her previous injury and arranged for a physio appointment. This process usually takes around 6 weeks to get an appointment. She had already explained that she had access to the teams physio and they weren't able to help.
She attended the second training session where she was unable to train and was told by the team coaches and manager that she should really not be walking or to use crutches until she could get the ankle properly healed.
I was contacted at this stage as her parents didn't know what to do. Having heard the history of the injury and pain it seemed appropriate to clear any 'Pain Memory'.
The process for clearing 'Pain Memory' is quite straight forward and only takes a couple of minutes. We ran through the process and looked at some exercises to mimic running. She completed these without any discomfort so she went for a run. Well, even I was suprised that no further pain relief was required, she had felt no discomfort at all.
I heard back from them over the weekend, she has completed all her training sessions since without any sign of pain. The coaches and managers at the club were surprised to see her, one minute they're advising her to put no pressure on her foot and a few days later she was back in full training. The parents were also pleased to hear that she may be promoted to a higher team within the club as her footballing has improved since she was able to train properly for the first time in months.
This is a classic case of 'Pain Memory', but what is more worrying are the amounts of people who have the same condition. Imagine if this young lady had not cleared the pain, the likelihood is she would have had trouble with her ankle possibly for life. Once that pain has been reinforced in the mind, it can only be cleared by the mind. No amount of physio, ankle strapping is going to help, what it will do is reinforce the belief that there is something wrong with the ankle and it hurts!
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