An Introduction: What Athletic-Recovery.com is all about!

Hi and welcome to the athletic-recovery.com blog.

I am Chris and I started this website to create a knowledge-exchange for (sports) injuries. I am 25 years old and played basketball in the 4th league in Germany a couple of years ago. Shifting my focus, I decided to study business psychology and later management in Germany, France and the UK. Now I only play basketball recreationally and am passionate about sports and fitness, but let me tell you a little more about how the idea for this website came to be.

The idea started in 2017, when I had my first significant sports injury. I tore my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) playing basketball. When it happened, I was on a personal high, feeling athletically as strong as never before, so the diagnosis hit me hard and made me really miserable. Having no idea what I was up against, I went to googling and... wow... You can find a lot of information and people sharing their experiences, but it was all over the place. Back then, I thought it would be great to have a place to exchange experiences. However, I didn't pursue the idea. Instead, I just went about my recovery, trying to get back on the basketball court asap.

Fast forward to 2020. After the ACL tear, I never really got back to the level I had. This was due to other reasons - Basketball became secondary, my studies, internships, and moving through Europe, taking priority in my life. Early in 2020, I decided to give it another try and play recreationally for my university team. After one practice, I decided to directly participate in a university tournament, and well, I tore my Achilles tendon. This was one big f*ck. I was stuck in a foreign country, had no idea about the health system, the injury, and generally what was waiting ahead of me. The uncertainty really made it hard for me. Now, half a year after this injury, being close to a full recovery, I decided it is time to do something to help others going through the same crap. This time for real!

First of all, I want to create a knowledge-exchange for injuries. You might ask yourself: "What does this even mean?" Well, this website aims at you sharing your injury experiences, in hindsight, or even while it is happening. This way, you can see you are not going through this alone and it is also a chance to share best practices, exercises, and more. Also, newly injured folks can see all of the ups and down awaiting them. Check out the community section on the website and the Facebook community. Furthermore, I created a template (you can find it on the community page), so the experiences are shared in an organized and easily comparable fashion. Please comment and suggest ways I can improve this template, although it is just a rough guide.

Besides the community, I had a chat with a friend of mine. He is a physiotherapist and is helping me create useful exercises and content to help you get through your recovery. You can check out our videos on Youtube (Help us out by leaving a like and subscribing).

This project will be a work in progress. I am glad for anyone willing to share experiences and support the cause of injury recovery - both physically and psychologically.

Really excited to build something here together with all of you!

#recovertogether