Ep 31: Returning to sport after a long break

Michael Dermansky

Hi everyone and welcome to the show that helps you become more confident in your body so you can keep doing the things that you love. My name is Michael Damansky, I’m the Senior Physiotherapist at MD Health and I’ve got a special guest today, Pinakin who is a sports physiotherapist. Welcome to the show today.

Pinakin Godse

Thank you. Thanks Michael. I must say before you do all the introductions and stuff that I’ve been following this podcast for a while and it’s very helpful. It’s very informative and lots of different guests from a different walks of physio. So that’s great. Good work.

Michael Dermansky

Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s the aim to give people an understanding of what, you know, what the best life they can have and that they can actually build confidence in their body. I mean, we see this every day as a clinician. Um, it’s great to see that people come in when they’re not, they’re scared of doing things and they don’t, they don’t have their best life. And then, you know, we make a change in their lives and they can actually do the life, have the life they deserve. And that’s, yeah, that’s our job. And that’s what we try to do, you know, show people if they have what they can do to have confidence in their body and actually have the life they deserve. 

Let’s talk a little bit about you. Tell me about your history, about what’s your history as a physiotherapist and then your history in involvement in sport.

Pinakin Godse

So before we go to physio, I was a professional badminton player when I was growing up. So I played quite at a high level in under 16, under 19s badminton. That time I was in India, Mumbai. It was a very competitive field at that point. And then I chose a physio as a career because I wanted to stay in touch with my sport. So I wanted to do something which will allow me to stay in touch with my sport. That’s badminton. And that’s the reason I chose to do a physio.

Luckily I didn’t have any injuries or anything like that. I had a really good coach who pulled me aside at point when I was in that tender age of 18, 19 and told me, look, you’re doing great, but you might not be the best. And then it’s not a great thing to sort of push too hard at this point. And then probably it’s a good thing to choose another career, which will allow you to stay in touch with the sport, which was, which was a really good thing. And then I chose physio. Then I was working with the sports authority of India after finishing. That is as equivalent as AIS. I worked there for two years. Um, then I was an Adelaide. I did my masters from university of South Australia. At that point, they had masters in muscular skeleton and sports physiotherapy combined. We had all the big names: David Butler, Rory Marmosley, Mark Jones, Mary McGarry, everyone was up there. 

And when I was doing masters, someone offered me a job in Melbourne and so I moved to Melbourne at that point. And since then I’ve been working in private practice. I’m pretty much passionate about working in private practice along with the sport because that allows me a good connection with the sport. So I can continue working with my badminton and at the same time I can follow the athletes in my private practice as well.

So that works real well. And since I moved to Melbourne, I started working with badminton Victoria, badminton Australia and now badminton Oceania. So I’ve worked, I worked with Badminton Victoria, doing junior development camps where I was educating, doing some screenings and everything like that. 

Then with badminton Australia, I’ve covered multiple international tournaments as an on field physio, on field first aid person. I’ve also traveled with teams to international tournaments and then since past two years I’ve been working with Australian Para badminton team as a physio as well as I’m a classifier for the Para badminton. I’ve travelled with the Australian Para badminton team to a few tournaments such as World Champs to Tokyo last year and then the next step is badminton Oceania so I covered few tournaments for Badminton Oceania.

So that’s my sort of a physio history along with the sport. I’m of course on the APA Business Council with all the other esteemed physios around and I’m a chair of Sports Medicine Australia Victoria Council. So there are quite a few different hats going on at the same time.

Michael Dermansky

That’s quite a lot extensive sports history. So let’s get into some other questions as well. So, what are the important steps that you can see people take when they want to return to sport for an injury? So they have a, for example, a cartilage tear in the knee or, and they haven’t played for three months. You’ve seen this a lot over your sports career. What steps do you see they need to, they should be taking to get back to the sport they bought love.

Pinakin Godse

I think there are two important things which they have to consider – one is whether they’re ready, whether they’re ready in terms of physically, whether they’re ready in terms of mentally, whether they’re ready in terms of emotionally. I’ll just quickly elaborate on all those parts. So let’s start with the other way around. Let’s start with emotionally. Most of the time the athletes have a pressure: pressure in terms of performing before the Olympic year, pressure in terms of performing, of losing that Commonwealth Games here and things like that.

Michael Dermansky

Yeah.

Pinakin Godse

So there’s quite a bit of emotional drive going on for the athletes as well. So I want to know before they return to sport whether their decision is based on a sort of emotional drive. Sometimes athletes take decisions based on emotion; sometimes athletes return to sport earlier due to that emotional pressure and that could be dangerous in part. 

The other one is more of a mental pressure and now when I say mental pressure it’s more about the society pressure. Most of the athletes are growing up in that sort of a team environment although it’s not a team sport and there might be a pressure of outperforming your teammates. There might be a continuous pressure from your friends, from your colleagues who are playing currently and then constantly checking with you what’s happening with your rehab. When are you going to be back on the court and all those sort of things. 

And the third thing is of course physical. So you have to be absolutely ready, physically fit enough to go back on the court. And when I say physically fit enough, let’s say, for an example, let’s say if someone comes out with a knee cartilage injury, I want their lower limb to be strong enough. At the same time, I want their upper limb to be strong enough as well.

many athletes who come back from an ankle injury and after two months they end up with a shoulder injury because for those sort of a rehabilitation periods they were continuously focusing on to the lower limb and pretty much ignoring their upper limb up to certain extent. Now when I say ignoring it’s not only physical it’s mental as well. Now we know from the pain science point of view the brain is giving too much attention to the injured part which is ankle and then you don’t have enough neural pathways around your shoulder as well so

Michael Dermansky

Yep.

Pinakin Godse

Those three things, they have to be ready in terms of getting back onto the court. That’s the one part from the athlete point of view. And the second point of view is from, it’s my personal as a physiotherapist, that I want to be comfortable to say that this athlete gets returned to sport without any further risk of injury. Now when I say returned to sport, it also involves lots of outcome measures, it also involves lots of checking, it involves checking with the coach time of the cycle to get back or whether it’s worth the wait. So all those sort of things comes into the picture when they go back.

Michael Dermansky

Right, okay. And it’s interesting you mentioned the fact that they have to be physically ready, both the injury itself, the other body parts, and then emotionally and psychologically ready as well. Because I mean, if, you know, if someone can physically pass all the tests and it might be the right time, but if they don’t believe that their knee is ready to play, their chances of injury are just as high as if they have a physical injury as well.

Pinakin Godse

True, and sometimes people, person or some athlete sort of hold that mindset that my knee is injured, my knee is not as strong as the other knee, which alters their technique on the court. And if it alters their technique on the court, that puts their other body parts at the risk of injury, which we don’t want.

So they have to reach that sort of a stage where their brain is not consciously providing any more neural inputs to that injured part. The brain needs to be in the safe zone where it thinks that the injured part is as good as the other part and it’s healed.

Michael Dermansky

So it’s interesting that, so if someone’s serious about getting back to sport to that, any level, especially the high level as well, it can’t just be the injury. You need to really make sure that your body is strong enough on all parts. That all the things that you haven’t been working on during that one time, you know, getting back to making sure that that’s at the high level as well, to minimize your risk of injury, that you’re ready, you’re coming back at the right time and the right cycle, and that you feel actually mentally uncomfortable doing this. I’m ready to go.

But if you’re not, it’s not the right time. You may need to practice it a little bit longer. It’s okay to be another week, another month, another year. And then you’ll come back better and stronger rather than, you know what, I’m 80% ready, but I just don’t feel right. And then, you know, we have to waste, it goes through the whole cycle all over again.

Pinakin Godse

That’s right. And that’s the point where a little bit of a coach comes into the play as well. I would say a little bit, quite a bit. Because if their technique is going to alter, their game is going to alter, and if someone is 90-95% ready and they have got an Olympic coming on, once in a lifetime opportunity, pretty much for a few athletes, once in four years, can we push them? Or is it just worth to wait and plan for the next comp games for the Olympics? And that’s where the coach comes into the picture because they know the cycle of an athlete that game.

Michael Dermansky

And that’s a really tight interplay between rehabilitation professionals like ourselves, who, you know, we can get person to person stronger, fitter, all the background checks that have to be there, but then how does that fit into the into the sports cycle? That’s the interplay between the physical therapists and the coaches as well.

Pinakin Godse

100% and another, there can be more dimensions, the more we talk, the more we know. This is another dimension, if the doubles player get injured, what’s their partner gonna do in the meantime? They’re gonna lose ranking points, they’re gonna probably continue with someone else, so all those things come into the picture as well.

Michael Dermansky

Yeah. So that’s the injured athlete as well. What about someone that doesn’t have an injury and they want to start a competitive sport like badminton? What, what pathway should they take? Should they, you know, I’m a good athlete. I should give it a go on, especially, I guess, you know, um, we’re seeing it with some of the juniors cause they don’t, they don’t, they don’t always have that, all that structure around the professional athletes. Like they’re a good badminton player. They’re a good football player. They want to get up in those higher ranks. They’ll play more football.

What’s missing in that?

Pinakin Godse

So what I would say is, when when any sort of a there is a translation of a sport from one to other You have to respect that it’s a completely different sport Someone can run a marathon, but that cannot be good at 100 meter sprint. They’re completely two different sports And that’s still with the running now if we compare let’s say even with the squash and the tennis and the badminton There’s all are racket sports, but the shoulder angle required while playing is completely different the lunge velocity is completely different the on the knee and ankle are completely different. Stop and start, change of direction, all those things are completely different. The what things, there are a few cycles which we go in terms of a training and an elite level athlete. One is more of a hypertrophy, which everyone hates. Everyone thinks that they’re just getting bulkier, it’s stronger and they’re not gonna move well. But that hypertrophy phase is much more of a fundamental phase for any athlete and they have to have that. Once they pass that hypertrophy stage, they can go on to strength.

endurance stage which is more required for the badminton because it’s a more of a repetitive space stop and start and third stage I would put them into is more of a agility plyometric where they’re performing but at the same time they’re keeping up some of the strength endurance phase as well so for any athlete who is transitioning from one sport to the badminton they have pretty much got the first stage sorted I hope so and once they have got that sort of a fundamental stage then I think it’s just changing your training program to be strength endurance part and then leading up to the sport specific plyo matrix. So for example, let’s say 200 meter sprint, great, great workout and all those sort of things but doesn’t help for badminton. Badminton court finishes in five steps.

Pinakin Godse

And so I would probably more focus on to those sort of a single leg hop, crossover hops, change of direction, stop and start, T-test, all those sort of agility and plyometric drills rather than going for that long sort of a running. So when an athlete is transitioning, I think we need to understand all the sports, and I’m speaking not only for badminton, pretty much all the sports, are more of a skill. You don’t get strong by doing the skill. You need to be strong enough to perform the skill. You can’t get strong by playing soccer. The Cristiano Ronaldo is not getting six packs by playing soccer. He is working hard in the gym so you can play the soccer. Same thing goes with the badminton. You need to be strong enough for that sport which will allow you to enjoy that skill.

Michael Dermansky

Yeah.

Pinakin Godse

Now this is more for the elite athlete who is transitioning. So of course for them the transition will be easy. It won’t take as much time, but someone who is quite a mature, he’ll have to do, he or she will have to do a lot of work.

Michael Dermansky

So that’s a very interesting step and we see this quite often as well, that people play a sport, they do that sport, but they don’t do all the things around it. Like step number one, and this is, you know, the secret to a lot of sports is that you need to build your strength base first. That should be the beginning for every, almost every athlete these days as well is that if you want to be a good runner, you have to be strong. If you want to be good basketball, you need to be strong. If you need to be with badminton player, you need to be strong. If you want to be a good sprinter, you need to be strong. That’s the fundamental start. You want the stability muscles, the power muscles to be strong and that’s your base and then from there you build on it as you said the strength endurance and then the sport specific agility plyometric strength as well and then the skill specific to that sport but you need a good base to start off with as well.

Pinakin Godse

You can’t go wrong by getting strong – at all, never. So that would help. And you don’t have to go into a lot of details if you’re transitioning at the early stage. When you reach that sort of elite stage, you can go into a lot of details as much as you want. You can go into the lactic acid, VO2 max, 1RM and things like that. But before that, you have to be just basically strong to be able to play that. So just get into the gym, build those muscles, get on the court.

Michael Dermansky

So we’ve spoken about this topic so many times in this podcast as well, how the importance of being strong as well for, you know, we’ve talked about it for the everyday person just wanting to go to the gym. We talked about this, the person in their fifties, the person that are older in the eighties, how important that strength base is. And now we’re talking about that late sporting level. This is where you start. So where do you want to be? We want to be stronger as well. We have a good base of strength first, and then we can build everything else after that too.

the agility, the sports specific stuff. And you know, your sports a lot better for the two and your risk of injury really goes down because if you injure yourself, we have to go back and what do we have to do at the start? We have to make you stronger. It’s the same basics again.

Pinakin Godse

True, that’s right. That’s right. And again, if you are coming out from an injury, it’s better to wait till you are 100% and before you go on the court. Because what’s the point? You go on the court, you’re not gonna give your 100%, you’re not gonna perform well within a month or two, you’re more vulnerable for another injury and hope not. But if that another injury happens, then you’re again out for six months.

Michael Dermansky

Yep, yep, yep. So that.

Pinakin Godse

And that feeds into the psychological and emotional part as well. And then that’s going to create a lot of trouble for the psychology of an athlete. And then that will again hamper the physical part of it. So it’s a vicious cycle. We just need to break that by getting strong and wait until you’re 100%.

 

Michael Dermansky

So going back, doing the fundamental steps first. It seems slower at the start, like, oh, I have to do all this extra work to be stronger as well before I go to play. Yes, you do. Because what we’re really trying to do is actually not fast track the process, but make it more complete. So we don’t end up again, what we should have happened in the first place. The sad thing is, and I mean, you probably see it as well, is that…

Often people have to be injured to be able to go back and work on those fundamentals. We wish we had them beforehand But they were too right busy racing for the goal. They didn’t do the do the basics as well It’s like okay You’re gonna need your eat the blessing in disguise here So we can bring you back do what should have been done in the first place and then bring you and then bring you forward from there

Pinakin Godse

then we do that. Yeah.

And in that process, we sort of sometimes lose half of a cycle of an athlete. And that’s why I feel it’s really important for the juniors to understand this, because when they’re into that first year of a professional play, they have got a really good time to work on these basics and fundamentals to make it strong, so their next career and the longevity of their career is not affected. It’s really hard to implement this for a professional athlete who is already into that Olympic cycle.

Michael Dermansky

Right. Well, you’ve, you’ve just basically gone straight into the question. I was gonna ask as well, is that when people want to transition to that professional level, what would you, what was your strongest recommendation? And people want to go from, you know, just playing your recreational sport to like, you know, I’m actually a professional athlete. You, where would you start? But you’ve, uh, you’ve done, does down the path already. So, you know, you’re, you’re stronger than recommendation one, build that base of strength first. That’s your first step as being a professional athlete.

Pinakin Godse

100% totally and you need to look forward like are you if you want to transition into being a professional athlete Are you just looking for next one year and you’re gonna give it go that’s not gonna happen No professional athlete in this competitive world is can give that much time But if you are thinking for let’s say next five years or the next Olympic cycle you need to be strong enough So at least you will sustain for that Olympic cycle What’s the point of getting in with wrong fundamentals or not? Not a super strong muscles to get into it

Michael Dermansky

Hmm.

Pinakin Godse

and then you’re in Olympic cycle and three years down the line you’re injured which puts you back one more year. So that doesn’t work, that doesn’t help. So one thing, first thing is just build your fundamentals. So from my physio point of view, now when you try to go into that sort of a professional world there are other aspects as well and which an organization and a coach will help you. What about funding? What about traveling? What about money? What about skills? What about sustaining

Pinakin Godse

more basics and fundamentals to start with build and then how can you sustain those fundamentals how can you sustain that training when you’re gonna traveling let’s say six countries in seven weeks so all those sort of things as well which we need to work on another thing which I advise everyone and I just cannot emphasize enough is the recovery I

Michael Dermansky

Well, well, well.

Pinakin Godse

Well, I’m opening the big can of worms.

Michael Dermansky

Yes. I love that kind of worm. It’s a fantastic kind of worms. What’s wrong with training every day with no rest cycle doing strength training. I’ve only done, but I only did strength three days ago. I mean, I did upper body three times and lower body three times. And I also do training on top of that too. What’s wrong with that as well? It’s a, it’s such an important conversation piece.

Pinakin Godse

It’s massive and when I do the education sessions with the badminton victoria for the junior development camp my big topic like 80 85 percent is recovery If you’re not recovering enough, it’s just not gonna work. It’s gonna put you in a position where you’re at the risk of getting injured. Point one. Point two, your performance is going to be affected. Point three, your personality is going to be affected. Point four, that’s just going to affect your next tournament. That’s going to affect your pretty much next cycle. It takes a lot. For example, all our badminton athletes are chasing for the, working for the paris now and they just had a big tour where they were pretty much did six countries in six weeks. 

That’s the biggest recovery tool you have. What are you gonna do with the sleep? What are you gonna do with your recovery? How are you gonna fit your training and strength and conditioning into that sort of a routine when you’re traveling pretty much everywhere around the world? And that’s where I think as a physio is my role. And that’s what I think is very important to consider. And just, it’s a habit. It’s like an atomic habit. So you just, you need to get that into the habit.

Michael Dermansky

Mm.

Pinakin Godse

If you get your recovery, if you make a recovery as your priority in your training from start, from junior level, great! You’ve got a gold miner!

Michael Dermansky

And so let’s be clear to the audience as well. When you say recovery, what does that mean to you?

Pinakin Godse

Again, there are two things. One, are you physically recovered? Which is as we know that certain, every tissue takes a little bit more time in terms of recovery, we don’t do plyometrics back to back on the days, the muscles recover different, tendons recover different. So that’s where a professional opinion comes into the picture. The second thing is the psychological recovery as well. Are you feeling up to your game today? Are you feeling a hundred percent? And I think that itself will give us quite a bit of a data.

should be trained from junior years to self monitor what they’re feeling. Are they ready? Are they feeling lethargic? Are they feeling lack of sleep? Are they are they feeling more hungry or not hungry than before? What’s happening with the nutrition? So those sort of things there are there are two ways one is get a professional help talk to your coach talk to your physio second is self evaluation

Michael Dermansky

Yeah.

And I mean, you know, as you’re leading to as well, recovery isn’t active part of the job. It’s not just what you physically do. It’s between workouts, between training is just as important as what happens at the training. Cause the reason why you’re doing the recovery is it’s allowed that adaptation to occur. Cause if you, you’re the, the changes you make in from training occur when you rest, not when you exercise, you add a stimulate, you add a load, you tell your body, I need to go to the next level.

give it that stimulus and then you need to give it time to build that change and if you’re not having that recovery as a planned part of your program that’s not going to happen. You’re not going to adapt, you’re not going to change. It’s going to be a slow process and then you get that flip end and you get that high risk of injury so it goes even further back.

Pinakin Godse

I totally agree. I personally think that sometimes when I talk to athletes, I don’t put recovery as a different topic. I just say that recovery is a part of training.

Michael Dermansky

It’s a part of training. Absolutely.

Pinakin Godse

It’s a part of training. We need to train recovery as well. So the way you are training into the gym, I’m going to give you a training program as well as I’m going to give you that sort of a recovery program. That’s a part of training. And recently I just read a book, why we sleep. That’s a great book. I forget the name of the author, but it’s a beautiful book which talks about why we sleep and how the brain sort of reorganizes everything when we are learning, how the muscles reorganizes everything when we are, when we are sleeping.

That’s a great book if anyone wants to go to. Just a funny truth bomb from that, that human species is the only species in the world who deprive themselves of sleep voluntarily.

Michael Dermansky

Right. I never knew that.

Pinakin Godse

So no other species, no other animals deprived themselves of sleep. Why do we do that? That’s the greatest recovery tool we have ever had. We don’t, if you’re doing the basics right, and again, we are coming back to the basics and the fundamentals. If you’re doing nutrition, sleep, all those things right, you don’t need fancy massage guns. You don’t need fancy recovery tools and stuff like that. You’re doing everything right.

Michael Dermansky

Yeah. So, I mean, my biggest question and last question I really had was what the obvious mistakes people make when they want to return to sport. But I mean, it looks like, uh, in the, uh, the two biggest things we keep talking, we talk about, and we’re talking about it today and putting it together. We’ve spoken about some other podcasts too, is that the one having a good base of strength and slow and building a base of strength sports, a strength endurance, um, and then skill-based, particularly for the sport. And then in parallel to that, and this should be an active part of the program.

is actually planning your recovery, your rest between workouts to get the fund, to get the, the actual benefits of the adaptations you’re working on. It’s not complicated and you know, and you don’t need, I mean, all the fancy massage things, a new thing will come out tomorrow. That’ll be the fan bangle recovery thing. None of them work. They don’t make any difference whatsoever. They just, you know, there’ll be the new flavor of the minute. And it’s usually, they’re even, they’re even faster cycles these days. But just the base.

Pinakin Godse

Every year, every year there is a new recovery tool coming. Why? It’s just a more marketing gaming. And I’ll just add on to what that one point, what people are doing wrong is, and that’s what I tell all my athletes as well, doing too much too soon after doing too little for too long. That’s the problem. That just sums up everything. Summs up training, sums up strength and conditioning, sums up recovery, all those things.

Michael Dermansky

Yep. So that, that big thing called patience and giving yourself actual time to learn and adapt. Um, it’s us. I mean, I guess it’s, it’s everyone in life these days too. Like, you know, have to get the yesterday. We don’t have to get yesterday. We have to get there step by step by step by step.

Pinakin Godse

Don’t tell me. It’s not a five minute YouTube world anymore. It’s like a 30 second TikTok world. And that’s hampering us.

Michael Dermansky

Yep. And the fundamentals haven’t changed. Our body hasn’t changed that much. But you know, one of the things we do know now too, is just how important number one, how strength conditioning, how it’s, it’s just a fundamental thing that you should be doing. If you’re playing before sport at any level, especially professionals, you know, that isn’t a non-negotiable anymore. You have to strengthen your work. And two, you know, recovery and being specific about your recovery is the fundamentals as well. If you are…

Pinakin Godse

content.

Michael Dermansky

One of the biggest things is if you have plateaued in your performance and you’re no longer getting better that is often a sign that your recovery isn’t good enough. You haven’t planned it well enough.

Pinakin Godse

True. Totally agree.

Michael Dermansky

All right, any last thoughts, Pinakin, before we finish up today?

Pinakin Godse

As I said, it’s just plan your journey well, make sure you think ahead, get the fundamentals right and avoid doing too much too soon.

Michael Dermansky

Ffantastic as well. And I’ll, I’ll put a link to the book as well. Why, why we sleep in the, in the, in the notes as well. So the listeners can actually go to the show notes and listen to that and just listen to that too. Well, thank you very much for your time. That was a great podcast as well. I think, I think.

Pinakin Godse

Thank you so much, Michael. It’s a pleasure and honor to be on the podcast, to be honest.

Michael Dermansky

No worries at all. And next week we’ll actually be talking to an endurance athlete as well about his journey, about what he does in terms of making sure he can do long distance walking. He’s been doing it for quite a long time and the balance of strength, recovery and activity is a fundamental way why he’s able to do that too. Thank you very much, Pinnikin.

Pinakin Godse

Perfect. Can’t wait to hear that. And I personally feel when you talk to athletes, you learn so much more about the recovery and the training cycles because they’re the one who are doing it.

Perfect. Thank you.

 

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