How to deal with injury

mat huang Asked 8 years ago

Hi Coaches,

Recently I have had a competition where I suffered a minor injury on my arm during a game. I managed to win that game in a close 5 set match however in the next game ( 1hr later) I couldn't play well.

The injury was maybe a sore/a bit sprained shoulder, definitely not enough to make me forfeit my match.

Just wondering how would you deal with this issue tactically and mentally because in game I kept thinking about my injury, sometimes making excuses of me losing during the game. 

Thanks for your advice

Alois Rosario Answered 8 years ago

Hi Mat,

Firstly it is important that if you are injured that you don't make things worse by continuing the play.

Assuming that the injury was minor and that you were not doing any more damage, you can try to change your game tactically.  Think more about restricting your opponent from making effective attacks.  This can be done with placement and also choosing the type of shots you are making.  Finding the opponent's weaker side and then also working out which type of shots they like least, backspin, flat, topspin...

Often when we are reduced to this situation, we can still have good results because we start to think more about our choice of shots.