Asha De Fre­itas-Mose­ley

Amer­i­can foot­ball play­er, Na­vor­ro Bow­man, a key line­backer for the San Fran­cis­co 49ers, tore his an­te­ri­or cru­ci­ate lig­a­ment this past week­end. The wider pop­u­la­tion may know of this struc­ture by its acronym, the "ACL."

Bow­man is re­port­ed to have al­so in­jured his me­di­al cru­ci­ate lig­a­ment (MCL) in the tack­le but some re­ports state that they are wait­ing two weeks to make a fi­nal de­ci­sion on whether this too will re­quire surgery, I sus­pect to al­low the in­flam­ma­tion phase to pass. An out­stand­ing play­er in the league right now and de­scribed as "un­for­giv­ing" on the field by one sports re­porter, his in­jury is du­ly not­ed as his ab­sence will be felt by his team and fans alike.

While it is al­ways hard to pre­dict ex­act­ly when an ath­lete will be full-go again, Bow­man is an­tic­i­pat­ed to be ready in time for the start of the 2015 sea­son which starts lat­er this year. When asked whether he will be as good as he was be­fore the in­jury, one re­porter was re­as­sured that he will. I think much of that came from the ghast­ly dis­tor­tion of the knee af­ter im­pact.

Once surgery is done, Bow­man will face an in­ten­sive off-sea­son of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ver­sus the typ­i­cal bit of R&R fol­lowed by en­durance, strength and pow­er train­ing be­fore the start of pre-sea­son. An ath­lete at that lev­el, af­ter sus­tain­ing an in­jury, lives in the train­ing room (in the States ath­let­ic train­ers who are spe­cial­ly trained to man­age ath­lete in­juries call their space a "train­ing room" ver­sus a "clin­ic") fac­ing their re­hab pro­to­col ag­gres­sive­ly as they race the clock to get back on­to the field as quick­ly and safe­ly as pos­si­ble. Tech­nol­o­gy with knowl­edge al­lows a re­hab team to meet the seem­ing­ly "su­per hu­man" time­line. It is a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors that con­tribute to this but what it all boils down to is "com­mit­ment."

Good clin­i­cians with ac­cess to the right re­sources can achieve the best out­comes. Good ath­letes who aim for per­fec­tion in every­thing he/she does will get the best re­sults. When you read up on Chris­tiano Ronal­do's path to suc­cess, it is clear that every de­ci­sion made was care­ful­ly cal­cu­lat­ed and de­lib­er­ate. He sur­round­ed him­self with cred­i­ble peo­ple, who had the tools to achieve in­cred­i­ble things while he gave them his full com­mit­ment.

While it is where it starts and ends, a com­mit­ment to ath­let­ic ex­cel­lence is about more than the ath­lete's de­sire to achieve. A strate­gi­cal­ly in­ter­wo­ven ap­proach is nec­es­sary from fi­nancers to the clean­ers. We live in a world of a lot of "-ists" some­times to the point where it seems that the per­cep­tion is that on­ly the "-ists" count. Car­di­ol­o­gists, psy­chol­o­gists, phys­io­ther­a­pists, po­di­a­trists...and in T&T we have our own spe­cial­ists called "band­wag­o­nists" but it must be re­mem­bered that these aren't the on­ly types of spe­cial­ists.

You have ath­let­ic train­ers, ar­chi­tects, ac­coun­tants, fi­nan­cial ad­vi­sors, project man­agers, etc and when it comes to sports, as it does in any oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tion or ven­ture, every sin­gle per­son has a part to play to­wards con­tribut­ing to over­all suc­cess.

In my field, while hav­ing the fan­cy equip­ment is not nec­es­sary for good out­comes, ac­cess to the best tech­nol­o­gy can cer­tain­ly im­prove them. Check it this way: you have two clean­ers both with ex­pe­ri­ence and good rep­u­ta­tions and they both need to get a huge ware­house floor shiny clean. One us­es ba­sic tools to get the job done–a broom, a mop and buck­et, a scrub­bing brush, pol­ish and gets on their hands and knees to ex­e­cute. The oth­er has ac­cess to more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ad­vanced tools that are eco-friend­ly.

Which of the two sit­u­a­tions will in­volve more cost? Which of the two will be less like­ly to suf­fer with back pain and/or knee pain and there­fore be health­i­er? Which of the two will work faster and more ef­fi­cient­ly? There­fore, which of the two in the end will have bet­ter mea­sur­able out­comes? They are both good, but the one with the tools, trained to use them well will clear­ly per­form bet­ter.

If all goes well, Bow­man will be ready for next sea­son be­cause he is sur­round­ed by the best. The fran­chise has in­vest­ed in him as a pro­fes­sion­al ath­lete just as they have in­vest­ed in their fa­cil­i­ty and hu­man re­sources. What­ev­er equip­ment is need­ed, they have. What­ev­er train­ing is re­quired, they pro­vide it or at least give their pro­fes­sion­als the means to ac­quire it.

If we in T&T want to see the same re­sults, we must first recog­nise what "lev­el of com­mit­ment" that is re­quired and recog­nise that what­ev­er we are will­ing to in­vest is di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to what we are will­ing to ac­cept.

Asha De Fre­itas-Mose­ley is a cer­ti­fied ath­let­ic train­er with the Na­tion­al Ath­let­ic Train­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion of the USA. She has 11 years of ex­pe­ri­ence re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing ath­letes and mem­bers of the ac­tive pop­u­la­tion from in­jury to full play. She can be reached at Pulse Per­for­mance Ltd, lo­cat­ed at #17 Hen­ry Pierre St, St James. Tel: 221-2437.