Recently, I had a reader email me to ask about recovering mentally from a crash. It’s a great question, and tricky. Long after road rash heals, the memory of it may remain, and it might make riding on the road/trail/wherever a lot scarier. The same is even more true for crashes caused by drivers, getting hit by cars, or more severe injuries that happen in-race. Some people bounce right back, but for others, it can take a while. And every crash is different. Some of my most severe crashes didn’t make me nervous at all, and I was super psyched to get back on the bike. Others made me much more hesitant.
I once cracked a frame hitting a pothole while drafting another rider, concussing myself severely in the process. It never occurred to me to be nervous about getting back on someone’s wheel (OK, maybe hesitant about that person in particular but otherwise, no problem). But that same year, I got doored and fractured my cheekbone (college wasn’t kind to my body, clearly), and even now, I get nervous riding in areas where there are cars parked on the side of the road.
Years ago, I wrote an article for Bicycling about my experience with hypnotherapy for getting over nerves when riding on singletrack. And yes, I did find hypnotherapy helpful (and another friend of mine in a similar situation to you tried it and loved it as well!). But I think there’s a major caveat: If you do try hypnotherapy, my best advice is to truly believe that it will work. A healthy dose of the placebo effect of BELIEVING whatever you’re trying will help is probably just as important as any actual neurological changes!
That said—I actually have found regular therapy to be just as helpful! Finding somewhere you’re comfortable to talk through the fears is the big part—after a crash, you may still harbor some trauma long after your body has healed, which is totally understandable.
It may even help to talk through your crash with a coach, just to figure out if there’s anything in racing/training you can work on to lessen the chance of it happening again, or to get yourself mentally back in the game.
But the simpler (free) tactic might just be practicing mindfulness. I was working on a piece about how to practice mindfulness and meditation on-bike, and the people I interviewed had some really good tactics for potentially getting over a setback from an injury. Scott Anderson, a longtime meditation coach and now researcher at U Wisconsin, explained that there are tactics you can use on the bike to move on from a crash or injury:
“If we take a look at injury risk or injury prevention, what we oftentimes find is that an athlete struggles mentally,” he says. “Let’s say they crash their bike. Logically, the next time they get back on their bike, they’re going to be a little bit scared because they don’t want to crash it again. And it’s very likely that in the process, they’re going to be a little bit stiff and they’re going to be trying to control their movements more from the prefrontal cortex, rather than trusting the neural pathways that have been etched in very deeply by the hours and the years they spend on their bike.”
Here’s how mindfulness helps:
It Lets Your Body Do What It Does Naturally
“In general, when we trust our body to do an activity that we’ve done for a long time, we’re pretty resilient,” Anderson says. “But when we start to over-control it, that’s when we’re more at risk for getting injured. For example, you know that if you ride with people who are pretty experienced, and there’s a squirrel in the road, you can trust that the riders will respond in a skillful way and not put the whole group in jeopardy. But if somebody is overly controlling things and really stiff, they’re a menace to the whole group.”
It Brings Us to the Present
“What mindfulness allows us to do is to be in the present,” he explains. “When we’re in the present, then we’re less likely to be a fearful of a past experience repeating itself. What we see in soccer players is that when a player twists his knee once, he becomes less coordinated because he’s trying so hard to make sure that he doesn’t twist it again. But that puts him at greater injury risk. He’s basically over controlling it.”
It Stops Your Brain From Over-Thinking
“Mindfulness practice can help reduce paralysis by analysis,” he says. “For a cyclist, they’re naturally going to throw a leg over their bike and get outdoors. The next time you go out and ride, take a few moments to feel the breeze on your skin, to feel the sensations associated with the movement, without trying to change the experiences, without trying to alter them. And for as long as it’s comfortable, simply be with the sensations as they are. For example, that can include what you hear: what are the sounds? Do you hear birds or cars? We tend to like one more than the other, but try to take in all the various sounds that are surrounding you. That can help bring you into the present moment and release that feeling of stiffness and over-focus.”
