Our practice treats a lot of athletes. From professional to high school athletes and plenty of weekend warriors.

No matter what level, every patient we see wants to know how quickly they can return to their sport.

This makes sense, everyone wants to return to the activities they love as quickly as possible.

It would seem too, that most people would even throw caution to the wind if that meant getting back to their sport quicker.

This, of course, is usually not the best practice and could lead to injury recurrence.

There may be people and circumstances where pushing faster to full return makes more sense, but for others, not so much.

Let’s take a look at the differences in return to sport philosophy between several different groups of athletes.

Weekend Warriors:

The term “weekend warrior” may be a disservice to the level of commitment and passion that some people have for their sport. There are a number of runners, rec soccer players, and rec lacrosse players that we see that have passion and commitment to their sport that rival a professional’s.

The term “weekend warrior” however serves the purpose to establish that these athletes are no longer participating in their sport for monetary or scholastic gain. Winning or competing is for pure pleasure at this point and their athletic pursuits would cause no impact on other aspects of their life should they cease.

In this case it is longevity that is the true goal, rather than short term success.

If I were to ask a weekend warrior if they had to choose between running next week’s marathon or being able to enjoy running injury free for another 10 years, which do you think they would chose?

I would bet that rationalism would outweigh instant gratification and that most people would rather do the activity they love for years to come, rather than risk injury pushing for a short term goal.

So for the weekend warrior group goal planning is easy.

Being able to participate in the activity that they love for a long period of time is of utmost importance and thus return to sport goals should be more conservative and progressed slowly over a long period of time.

It would be hard to argue against longevity at this phase of an athlete’s career.

High School Athletes:

In this group of athletes we start to see some gray areas emerge in return to sport planning.

Why the gray area? Because for some high school athletes there is more at stake.

Some high school athletes dream of playing their sport in college and often times there is a very short window to impress college recruiters.

If an athlete came to us with an injury and said they needed to have a good season to secure scholarship opportunities then we would have to start a conversation on the risks vs. benefits of a faster paced return to sport progression or even a modified participation.

The conversation would be an open one between the athlete, their family, and their PT to weigh the pros and cons of continuing to play or pushing for a quicker return.

Decisions get harder to make with more at stake and sometimes there isn’t a “right” answer for everybody.

Of course not all high school athletes want to play in college. If this were the case then the decision gets much easier. Health and longevity are easily prioritized with a slowly more gradual return to sport progression.

Professional Athletes:

Enter the gray zone….

At this level return to sport and goal planning can get very complicated. With money, contracts, and careers on the table, return to sport planning isn’t so cut and dry.

Getting injured mid season during a mediocre year with 3 years left on one’s contract would be a much different situation then getting injured in the conference finals in the final season of your contract. In the later, there may be a much stronger argument to attempt to play in one more game. In this case an athlete may decide the professional, financial, and career rewards are worth the risk of playing injured and it may be tough to argue against that.

Someone in the very same situation may decided that their health, no matter what the circumstance, is most important and it would also be hard to argue against that as well.

This is why return to sport and goal planning has to be specific for the athlete, their situation, and their goals.

Conclusion:

Like everything in life no two people or circumstances are the same. Return to sport and goal planning need to be made on a case by case basis, taking into consideration a number of individual factors and the goals of each athlete.