3.1 The two aspects of sport injury psychology

The activities you have completed within this session so far have highlighted that the psychological aspects of sport injury can be split into two broad categories:

• psychological factors that may increase an athlete’s risk of developing an injury (psychological antecedents of injury, or pre-injury), and
• psychological reactions to sport injury and their impact (post-injury).

Figure 4 Psychological factors are important both pre- and post-injury.

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A photograph of an injured woman sitting on the floor in a gym, clutching her knee in pain. A man standing behind her comforts her.

Figure 4 Psychological factors are important both pre- and post-injury.

The psychological antecedents of injury and the interventions that can be put in place to reduce the risk of injury will be examined in detail in Sessions 3 and 4, while psychological reactions to injury and the interventions that can be used to reduce negative reactions to injury are discussed in Sessions 5–8.