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.

What’s the secret to athletic success? People attribute their success to many things and it’s a helpful query to keep in mind when pondering greatness on a playing field. Kemba Walker, the University of Connecticut’s superstar point guard who helped win this year’s NCAA Championship, isn’t just a fantastic basketball player. Ask Kemba’s father, Kenya, the secret to his son’s success on the basketball court and he has an unusual answer, writes Aditi Kinkhabwala in a recent Wall Street Journal article: “The dancing.”

Kemba danced throughout his childhood, taking modern, jazz, and hip-hop classes as a youngster, and performing with his dance troupe throughout high school. Watch him move on the basketball court, and look for the dancer within. “It shows up in the way Walker contorts his body on reverses, shimmies through traffic and tap-steps around picks. It’s partly the net result of thousands of hours of practice, but it’s also a byproduct of his lithe feet and the flexibility that allows him to do the splits—something Walker always hated practicing in Patterson’s dance class,” writes Kinkhabwala.

Maybe you won’t rush out and sign up for ballet to improve your tennis game. But this is a point to ponder. What creates athletic success? While Kemba’s dancing had an impact on his success, we have to look deeper at his dancing to see what was really going on through it that contributed to his success. For Kemba, it appears his dancing was a path to helping him build his core fundamentals. We know that core fundamentals influence elite performance: hard work, good balance, intrinsic motivation, perfect practice, and confidence. Dancing for Kemba wasn’t just about the footwork and physical flexibility, it was also about the mental side of performance. While people want to attribute success to many things, and there is no doubt those things play a role, success for elite performers is truly about building the core fundamentals.