It’s not unusual for athletes to train according to the slogan “no pain, no gain.” Indeed, this is a worthy idea, unless it leads to overtraining. Sport Psychologist Kirsten Peterson, Ph.D., addresses overtraining in The Sports Psych Handbook (edited by Shane Murphy). She defines overtraining as an exercise program that leads to “an undesired outcome of fatigue and performance decrements.”

In other words, over-trained athletes are not completely burned out, but their bodies aren’t experiencing enough recovery time. Physical and psychological symptoms, writes Peterson, include (partial list):

• Muscle pain or soreness
• Weight loss
• Gastrointestinal disturbance
• Overuse injuries
• Loss of self-confidence
• Anxiety
• Emotional/motivational changes

The easiest way to see if you are experiencing overtraining is by taking your resting heart rate after you wake up and before you go to bed. Usually, athletes resting heart rates decrease through training, but if your training load is overly intense, your resting heart rate will increase.

Most athletes don’t enjoy (or even feel like themselves) taking days off, they believe it detracts from their ultimate goal. The beauty of recovery, though, is that it can take many forms and giving the body proper time to recover is essential to regenerate emotional and physical energy. Start practicing relaxation techniques such as progressive relaxation, autogenic relaxation, or guided imagery. Think of recovery as reducing stress in all areas of your life. For example, if your work life is too taxing or certain relationships are causing undue stress, try to alleviate those stressors. Peterson writes that recovery has three levels: physical, social, and environmental. Eating right, practicing yoga, or taking a hike on your day off are all physical ways to recover. Social recovery means participating with people you like in “social activities that are relaxing and rejuvenating.” And environmental recovery can be as simple as changing your training locale. A sport psychologist can help monitor training to see if you are overtraining and help you learn and uncover optimal recovery techniques for you.

We all know the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” But have you heard “lowering stress levels keeps injuries at bay”? Of course this isn’t a commonly heard phrase. Still, three decades of research “shows that a combination of conditions puts athletes at a greater risk of injury: negative life stresses, an increase in daily hassles, previous injuries, and poor coping responses,” says The Sport Psych Handbook (edited by Shane Murphy).

Stress, inadequate coping skills, and personality traits doesn’t just make for a bad mood; these factors create an elevated stress response. What does this mean for a player? Athletes who have elevated stress responses suffer from more muscle tension, are more easily distracted, and a have smaller attention span, meaning you might not notice you are not holding your body in the proper form as you take that jump shot on the basketball court. Being under stress for long periods of time actually changes your “body’s endocrine system, making a person more susceptible to illness and slowing down the healing process,” says The Sport Psych Handbook.

We all know stress in unavoidable, but how do we manage life stresses and lower our injury risk? We need to learn coping skills to deal with stress. And, when life hits us with a big stressor — such as death of a loved one, a move across country, or the end of an important personal relationship —seeking professional help is a good idea if our coping skills are not up to speed. A sport psychologist can both teach you every day coping skills and help you deal with a big life loss. Taking deliberate steps to try and reduce stress can help lower the chance of incurring more stress through suffering an injury.

Although elite skiers in the 1997 Urdry et al. study thought of season-ending injuries as stumbling blocks that involved depression and misery, approximately 95 percent of the participants also talked of positive results, including “personal growth, psychologically based performance enhancements, and physical-technical development.”

Of course, this study (one of the few studies that examine the consequences of injuries on athletes, according to the book Psychological Bases of Sports Injuries) was conducted on average 2.7 years after the athletes suffered their injuries. It may take not only time to realize the benefits of injury, but the proper intervention as well. Runner and T.V. sportscaster Leslie Visser shattered leg bones, dislocated her hip, tore hamstring and groin muscles, and suffered facial lacerations during a run. Still, she believes she was lucky to receive “the best emergency care in the world.”

The highly competent care she received helped her see an extremely negative situation in a positive light. One of the ways you can turn your painful sports injury into the best possible experience is by seeking good physical and psychological care for yourself. Healing both physically and emotionally from your trauma is vital. While a sports doctor or a physical therapist can help you with your physical healing, a sport psychologist can assist you with your emotional response to your trauma. When a sport is one of your big life loves, it’s no small thing to suffer a big injury that takes you off of the field or out of a season. Finding the right professionals to help you heal and get back in the game in better form — both physically and mentally — means your injury can be life-changing in a good way.