AlexGraysonSquash.com

The waiting is over. Last Friday, 10 weeks after initially injuring my knee, I finally had reconstructive surgery which saw Stewart Walsh take a portion of my Patella Tendon, and reassign it with a new job of being a fresh ACL in my right leg. As I’m sure he has done many a time, it seems as though Stu has done a magnificent job, and with a lot of inflammation clearing, I am now able to spend most of my vertical time walking without crutches.

I’m so eager to walk around as much as possible after not doing a lot for 6 days, post-operation. I can probably say that those 6 days were some of the most frustrating of my life. Not being able to do much proved harder than I thought, and the sight of a television instead of an exercycle was getting on my nerves a little; nerves that I still cannot fully feel around my right knee. If crutches were burnable, then I’m sure I would have made a decent campfire out of them by now, and that campfire would’ve been much appreciated after the snow we had in Auckland earlier in the week. But, now I can walk, I think I’ve overdone it in the last couple of days. I’ve been trying to improve my range of motion in the leg, and although it has been successful during the day, the nights are a different story. My leg tends to stiffen up at night to the point where one of those lucky crutches still comes in handy. I don’t think I’ve been brutal on my leg, just perhaps a little impatient, and when I was walking okay again this morning, I decided to take it easy, opting to do exercises instead of out-and-about walking. 

Staying at home today has meant that I’ve been limited to the couch for the most part. Watching the Auckland Rugby team beat Bay of Plenty is one of the advantages. Fortunately, for a struggling Auckland side, today they were playing the Bay of plenty mistakes. The reason I bring up this rugby match is because while I was watching, one of the forwards for Auckland went down badly in a tackle. This player had just come back from a long-term injury, and when he went down in apparent pain, it was obvious he would be out of action again. It got me thinking about his age, and what another long-term injury could mean in his career, or in anyones sporting career for that matter.

Depending on what sport an athlete plays, he is expected to retire at a certain age, which is often the average age most competitors in that sport retire at. When something goes wrong, usually an injury, straight away I start to think, along with many others, that an injury can take invaluable time away from someones career. It’s almost as if I’m looking down a tunnel, and at the expected age, I’ll come out and say, “that’s it, it’s over, my career is done.” But then I got to thinking, what if the time away from sport due to an injury adds extra time onto our careers as athletes, due to the fact that we are not using our bodies so brutally during time out. I realise I’m  in no position to comment on how myself or others will feel when we get to the age where retirement is expected, as I’m many years away from that time, but at the moment it seems as though having an injury could be a good thing. In my last post I wrote about the figurative Fork In The Road I had found myself at, and the perspective I had gained from being at that point. It makes me think that if, ultimately, injury doesn’t take time away from your career, but instead adds time to the end of it, then being injured can be one of the most positive pivotal points in an athletes life.

Being injured is still frustrating, there’s no doubting that, and it’s only really dawning on me now, how long 6 more months, off court, will be.  Apart from the injury, my body feels like it’s in good shape, and so far in my career, mainly thanks to Anthony Ricketts, I think that I have trained very well without hurting my body too much, and with that in mind, I’m thinking the length of my career may go on a little longer than if I had not been injured. I really don’t think this injury is taking vital time away from my squash career. You only need to look at World Number One, Nick Matthew, to see how his injury a few years ago may have helped him, and possibly lengthened his career. At 31, Nick Matthew is playing the best squash of his life, and from what he says, he has no intention of slowing down any time soon.

I feel the invaluable motivation and perspective gained from injury will only prove to greater educate me on the game of squash, my own body, and also how to spend time away from the court.