Self-Talk During Sport Injury Recovery

Self-talk is a mental skill solicited in everyday life as well as in sports to enhance performance. Often this self-talk is instructional or motivational in nature. Self-talk research has support athletes using it during sport performance but this quantitative study was designed to understand more about its use during injury recovery. The target of this study was quantify self-talk before and after an injury as well as look at coping strategies utilized during sport injury recovery. Self-Talk was quantified pre and post injury using the Self-Talk Use Questionnaire (STUQ) (Hardy, 2004). Participants included 82 pre injury student athletes from four-year universities competing at the NCAA and NAIA level. Student athletes competing in a variety of team and individual sports were then eligible to complete the study if they had been injured and out of competition for a least one-week or more. 23 student athletes completed the post injury STUQ and the Brief COPE Inventory (Carver, 1997). Findings showed that there was increased use of self-talk pre-injury and that females used increased negative self-talk pre injury and higher positive self-talk post injury compared to male student athletes. The purpose of self-talk was for motivation during the pre injury and shifted to more instructional nature during the post injury. Athletes that injured their ankles and were treated with a cast reported the highest rates of self-talk during post injury. A weak correlation was found between injury severity and self-talk use. Student athletes with severe injuries also reported the most frequent endorsement of 12 of the subscales of coping including seeking social support, planning and acceptance of the injury. This study, focusing on athletes recovering from injury, offers greater insight into the athletic experience of being injured and how to incorporate an athlete's propensity for self-talk and coping into psychological interventions coinciding with physical rehabilitation.