Latest / The ACL Athlete Podcast / 038 | 40 Milliseconds - An Opportunity

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038 | 40 Milliseconds - An Opportunity · The ACL Athlete Podcast

• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome everyone to the ACL Athlete Podcast.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is the podcast where we talk about everything related to the ACL, whether that's the injury itself, the rehab process, return to sport, and more.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Ravi Patel, performance physical therapist and coach.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Between myself and fellow guests and experts, you'll learn through the lens of the patient, the healthcare professional, and the coach.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: The goal of this podcast is to equip you, the athlete, with the education to make the best informed decision about your care and your ACL journey.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's dive into today's episode.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: What's up guys, and welcome back to another episode.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Today we are talking about 40 milliseconds.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And for those of you who are probably following me on Instagram, you probably know what this is about.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who have not, you're in for a treat today.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: But this one's gonna hit a little different.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope y'all are cool with this.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I sat down and I was thinking about this, and I just wanted to turn it into a podcast episode and dive a little bit deeper into this because I think that this can get missed a lot in this process, and it's not something that everyone can really relate to, really, unless you've really gone through this injury and through this surgery.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna kick this off by reading the caption to this post, and to frame this for you guys, I want you to imagine a picture with the number 40, 40, and then milliseconds right after that.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And what that equates to in terms of just seconds, it is 0.04 seconds, which is a very, very, very short amount of time.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the time it takes between the time it your foot hits the ground and for your ACL to tear.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna read you the caption of this post and then we're just gonna go from there.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: 40 milliseconds equals 0.04 seconds.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is the amount of time it takes for an ACL tear to occur after ground contact.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's fast.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to get fancy and stop my stopwatch at 0.04 seconds to use it as a photo for this post.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't do it because it was just too fast.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And this is how quickly your life can get turned upside down after an ACL injury.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Whether that's not competing in the sport you identify with, the camaraderie with your teammates, your potential career, that trip you had planned coming up, running around with your toddlers, the anxiety kicking in of gaining weight, daily activities we take for granted, like walking, using the bathroom, driving, sleeping, etc.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, this may seem dramatic, but any athlete who has gone through this process knows exactly what I'm talking about.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: It takes just one moment.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Then you have to start navigating a road that's completely foreign.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Who do I need to see?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: A surgeon?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is my insurance going to cover this?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Graft type?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: What's a graft?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Rehab?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: What's the recovery?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Nine months?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: No one ever thinks it's going to happen to them until it does.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: For the ACL athletes out there, just know it's okay to feel this way.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: It can be very overwhelming in a short period of time.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: I know I was feeling all of these things after my two own ACL injuries.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Even after it happens once doesn't mean it makes number two any easier.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: What's most important is that you make the best informed decision for your health and care.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Trust your gut, find someone to help guide you on your ACL journey.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And who knows that 40 milliseconds could be a defining moment for you in your life.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: I know it was for me.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, cue the violin, the dramatic music.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the reason I read this to you is because of how much it really hit home for me.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: After I kind of wrote this out and I was thinking about it, and I was thinking about all the ACL athletes that I talked to and the ones that I work with.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the feel of anxiety, the fear of the unknown, the what ifs, making the right decisions.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much that goes into this process, and a lot of people who haven't gone through this are probably like, dude, you're talking like someone just died.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not that serious, but it still is pretty freaking serious.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I've seen some people go down some really dark paths because you know they may not be able to play their sport again, or maybe it's happened multiple times and they're starting to lose hope, um, or maybe they've gained a lot of weight, or all these things, and that happened to me.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I had a lot of weight gain.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I had questions on if I would ever be truly athletic again, um, if I would ever come back to play my sport.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: All these things kind of factored into all these internal feelings that I was feeling, and realistically, no one ever expects to be on this journey.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: You aren't just like, ah, I'm gonna be an ACL athlete one day, you know.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: No one ever strives to be in this position, but then it's one of these situations where you are in this position, so then what do you do?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you have two options.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can sit in the misery, wonder why it happened to you, more of that negative glass half empty point of view, or you can use this as an opportunity.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: You can look at it from a more positive point of view, the glass half full.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm a big believer in everything happens for a reason.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, that 40 milliseconds really transformed my life for the better.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: It has led me to pursue a passion in ACL rehab education, trying to help revolutionize this field for better care and my own passion, which is helping all of you ACL athletes in this space.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that 40 milliseconds really helped me to be able to essentially figure this out over time.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're currently in the middle of it, I know it sucks.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've been through it twice, and that's okay.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes there's no other way to put it, especially when you're potentially sit feeling a setback, or maybe things aren't going as planned.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your timeline that you had in your head, or maybe the physio you're working with, maybe it's not going out to what you want it to be, and that's totally fine to feel that way.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: But what's going to be most important is that you get out of that quick when it does happen.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if I look back at my own ACL journeys, if I reflect on the athletes who have done really well with me and who I have seen just have a great trajectory as well as getting back to the things that they love to do, even if it's one, two, even three ACL tears, and they're still trying to get back to those things, the people who end up having the best recovery are the ones who can shift this mindset from why did this happen to me to using this as an opportunity.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you might be wondering, what do you mean by an opportunity?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: And some of this is for you to figure out because it's going to be so specific to your context and your situation and where you're at in life.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that I always suggest to athletes to look at this is we're building from the ground back up, and you can become a better athlete through this process.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I had an athlete the other day say that she was in better conditioning than she was in high school as she's going through her rehab.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then one other athlete who is pushing way more weight and much stronger than she was at any point in her life in the past, from what she had remembered, and she's crushing her goals.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are opportunities to become a better athlete and be able to own positions better, to recover better, to learn more about your body, and to be able to understand training and not just running it into the ground, but understanding stress and recovery and balancing those two things.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the whole piece of just the mental aspect, right?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the term that I want to relate to this is resilience.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if you look up the definition of resilience, it's the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Toughness is another word that's synonymous with it.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't just for the injury, sure, it applies here, but this is for life, really.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you hear that word resilience thrown around a lot, and it's one of those things that really can apply to this situation.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And when I think about it in my own sense, and I think about anytime I face any type of ailment or difficulty or failure or just a hard, rough patch, um, you know, my two recoveries play a role into my ability to bounce back from it and stay strong.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like I can handle hard things because this has played into my experiences of things that are hard.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And whether that is the mental piece, the physical piece, the emotional, or all of the above, I feel stronger because of it.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's helped me a lot in life through these different experiences and through these different seasons.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: One person that I do want to point out that I think can give some good perspective here is Megan, who is an ACL athlete, and she was actually on one of the previous episodes where we did a patient perspectives roundtable, and she talks about how her journey's been, and it is crazy.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: She is up to her 11th surgery, and she has had sure a complicated journey overall, and I don't wish that on anyone, but anytime I talk to Megan, she is so positive, and she's like, I'm gonna get back on the field, I'm gonna play, and we're gonna make this happen.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you want to talk about a glass half full, that's about as half full as it gets, and it's very impressive, and it takes a lot of mental fortitude, a lot of resilience, and just a lot of reflecting to be able to have that type of mindset as you're in this journey, like Megan is.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's where I think this resilience piece can really help play a role for you in potential hard times to come in your life.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Which brings me to my next point, which is being able to use this as an opportunity to reflect on your identity and as your purpose as a human.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I know a lot of athletes, especially young athletes that I talk to who really do identify with a specific sport.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember whenever I was going through high school, I would identify myself as a football player, wrestler, baseball player.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was just one of those things, and especially if you're someone who plays one specific sport, it's kind of ingrained in you.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's just your your whole life in terms of whether it's practice or games, travel, whatever it is.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it can be one of those things that could be really devastating during this time whenever you might not be able to travel with the team or you can't practice, or whatever that dynamic looks like, it can get kind of difficult to navigate.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: So this is an opportunity not only for athletes who are in these sports, but any person who's going through this process to be able to just kind of reflect on their identity and what their purpose is in life.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: As I had alluded to earlier, this gave me an opportunity to seek rehab and physical therapy and to specialize in ACL rehab.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's honestly such a huge passion for me at this point.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've created a podcast about it, my company solely works with just ACL athletes.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you could kind of say I'm a little obsessed with this, but it's really something that I get fired up about every single day, and it's because of people like you who help me to live through this purpose and through the messages I get and through just seeing athletes responding well and getting back to the life and the activities that they love to do really fire me up.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so for you, being able to see, okay, is this something where you not only see yourself as an athlete, but as a human and what that purpose looks like?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then some other things to think about as this opportunity is being able to reconnect with friends or family because you might have some time to be able to do other things, or maybe is pursue other interests that you've had on the list, but because your sports or because of life, um, maybe you had to put those on hold or you've never pursued those, and maybe it's now time to kind of think through those things and maybe pursue some other interests or connect with other people that you've been wanting to.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: So this can be a time opportunity as well as just a life opportunity for you to be able to learn, but it's one of those things can be really tough because it's also a hard time to go through because you are recovering from rehab, there's also the physical pain of it, the emotional and mental piece of it.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: But as I had mentioned before, it's okay to have those days where it is tough.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: But if you can shift this mindset by looking at this 40 millisecond change as an opportunity instead of a why me, you might just notice that the tough days that you have are getting easier to get through, and you may even be a better human as a result of it.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: So this was a deep one, guys, and one that I wanted to share and to talk about.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I know it's a little different from typical episodes, but it really hit home for me, so I hope it hit home for some of you guys.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if it did, I would love for you to reach out to me on Instagram at ravipatel.dpt and just share with me any thoughts that you have.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, that'll do it for today's episode.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: As a reminder, each month I'm picking one person to have a free strategy call.
• 16:00
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• 16:05
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• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, reviews help a lot for other ACL athletes like you to be able to see this podcast and get informed decisions, educations about their own care, which is why I care so much about it.
• 16:21
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• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Much appreciated.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: That'll do it for today, guys.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you all so much for listening.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is your host, Robbie Patel, signing off.