My name is John Nicknish. I'm a junior here at UTD and I've been playing soccer since I was about four years old.

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Explain what your injury or injuries were and how they happened and when they happened.

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My basic injury was when I pulled my hamstring, and it was literally the day before spring season started. So we were retiming our sprints, and I was maybe four steps away from the line and I pulled my hamstring. It fetlt like I got shot by a gun. It hurt so much. Then I re-injured it again, playing sand volleyball, which was kind of my own fault. Just when I thought I was fully recovered from it, I reinjured it again, which sent me back a little bit more. After I reinjured it, it started to cause tightness in my back, so that affected me a lot too. I also had other injuries. I broke my pinky at the beginning of last season, which made me get a medical hardship or redshirt for that whole season pretty much.

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What did you have to do in order to recover from those injuries?  

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When I broke my pinky, I honestly just had to wait it out until I was out of the cast and out of the splint. It was just a lot of  grip rehab, so I had to just play with putty or use the little hand spring tools. It was really annoying, just going on and on like this. For my hamstring, for the first week or two I didn't really do any sort of rehab. I just had to do a lot of stretching, lots of ice as well as needling. I think needling really helped me the most. After that I did about four weeks of PT it was mostly stability and trying to get my strength back. It was not necessarily just like contractions with the hamstring, but it was also getting my hips and my glutes sharper around that muscle so I can help stabilize it and not rely on a weakened muscle. Once my back started to get issues, I had to just take two weeks off of everything, like I couldn't do anything. I had to slowly get back into it, and then I would get needles in my back and get cupped.

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What was your reaction immediately following the hamstring pull? 

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I knew it wasn't gonna be the end of my career, because you pull muscles all the time. Or at least, you hear people pull muscles, but I've never pulled a muscle in my life. So when that happened, I was just kind of like, "This is great, It's awesome". Then it hit me when I literally laid on the ground on my stomach. I thought, "Oh, my God, This hurts so much." I thought out of all the people, I'm the most flexible out of all the people that I know, I'm one of the strongest guys on the team, I thought "Why is this happening?" I trained from January until March, I was working out like nine times a week, my body felt good. How am I going to pull my hamstring the day before spring season? 

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What was your reaction following your re-injury?

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When I reinjured it, it was a different reaction, Just because I thought I was over it. But then I felt it pop again. And then I went to bend over and pick the ball up, I got halfway down, I felt the pain and I had to go back to Josh and explain what happened is he said, "that wasn't very smart of you to be doing that." I thought "it's okay, I'll just do all the PT that I was doing earlier, because I still had everything fresh in my mind." And I remember all the workouts that he made me do. But once it started to affect my back, especially since it was in the summertime, It was mostly like on me, I couldn't really rely on the trainers. And so I didn't take that very well, Because working out is kind of a big part of my life. I was hurting all the time. I was working as a waiter at the time too. So I was standing up for, you know, five, six hours a day. And it was just taking a toll on me. And it was hard. I was in constant pain pretty much. I never would have put the correlation between injuring my hamstring and the tightness in my back. But closer to the middle of the summer, I went and got some sort of test at the Medical place down the road. And she said, "Well, yeah, everything's connected there, so once you pull your hamstring, your back's gonna be working overtime." I said, "well, I wish I knew that a month ago."

It just took a toll on me, I honestly kind of went through depression, It wasn't my best of times. I didn't have motivation to really do anything. Just because I knew that if I went to try to do something, it either wasn't going to be good for me even as fun as it sounded. Or it was just going to hurt. There was one point where I just literally like, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm just gonna have to stop working out altogether, I'm never gonna play soccer again. I'm just gonna be in constant pain, and I'm going to be a cucumber. And then I guess there was just one day and I looked in the mirror one morning because I guess in the fall, I saw someone post that it's a good thing to keep a journal with progress pictures. So I wasn't necessarily trying to hit like a certain goal. But I wanted to see how my body was changing, like over time. So I took one once every week, every month. And so I looked in the mirror one time, I think it was late June. And then I looked at like how I looked kind of like the end of the fall. And It was like a huge difference. I got lost. And it was the least amount that I had weighed since sophomore year of high school. I have been like 185 what seems like my entire life honestly. I stepped on a scale it showed 181 and I just kind of had like a little bit panic attack.

I could tell that I was losing muscle. It even got to a point where parents were like, Oh, man, you're losing so much weight, are you eating? And said, "yes, I'm eating." So I thought, well, you know what this is just how it's gonna be and I'll have to slowly get back into it. And I was really depressed for the first month of summer. And then like one day came along. And I was like this is it's just it's all like mental. Like it was usually all mental for me. I had thought that was mentally strong, but as only because my life has been pretty good so far. I haven't had a setback. And then as soon as I had that setback, it sucked.

I just didn't know what to do. I didn't know who to turn to or to talk to. I talked to my brother in law. And he was just telling me stuff that I like already knew and I just didn't want to hear. But as soon as I finally bought into it. Having that feeling of Oh, Woe is me, like somebody come pity me and give me a hug. I had that for a good month. And I just attention. I just want people to be like, Oh, I feel so bad for you. And one of my friends told me, "you've been like this for a month. The only person that's going to get you out of this is you." That hit me and I was like, Okay, I'm going to do it. After that day forward, I try to change my outlook on it. I told myself that this is the lowest low that you're ever going to be. Don't let yourself get back into this. So the only way left is to go up a very steep hill. But I went up very slowly. I got up at some point. I started talking to my current girlfriend, she's in College Station so I didn't really see her but I was talking to her a lot. And she really helped me with my mental attitude. Because that's like one thing that she really knows a lot about. She listens to a podcast, and follows a lot of coaches and everything online. So she just started dropping knowledge bombs on all this, like every other day, and it opened my eyes. Honestly it really helped and I was like I was gonna take baby steps on the workout twice a week, it's gonna be something light. And I said that if I'm not working out, I need to at least be eating right. So I started to count my macros, and I still do and it's helped me a lot. I've gotten my strength back and more. And I just feel better altogether. But it definitely a long road and I'm still kind of weary about it. I can't like overwork myself, or else my back is just gonna go to crap again. I try and make sure that I'm focusing on form and that I'm not using my back, like on deadlifts. I try to keep it light. 

A lot of it was it was all just perspective really. You can have a certain attitude towards anything. And it's all going to be on one person that you really put me on and I started listening a really good coach. And since I was I was also working here for the athletic department and I was picking up trash around all the soccer fields. And so for about two hours a day I'd go out pick up trash, and just listen to podcast. That was one of the things that after she had like told me about a certain episode so I said "That'll be the first one I listen to." So I listened to that one and he said something that sticks with me to this day. And it's literally it's "control what you can and let go what you can't" And so there's you can control so many things in your life. But there's also so much more that you can't control. And so there's no point in trying to control injury, injuries happen, and injuries are going to happen whether or not you're ready for it or not. But the only thing you can control is going to be your recovery. So If you want to recover quicker, You're gonna have to control everything that you do. And whether or not you feel bad one day, you wake up, you just feel like crap physically. And you even though you're still doing all right recovery, it's just your body, like it's healing, you gotta trust that you have to trust the process. And it's going to be a long road. like pretty much no matter what your injury is. I honestly tell myself that at least once a day. And I talked to a lot of people to. It was just something that's always really stuck with me, and it's helped me through a lot of stuff.

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What would you say the biggest mental roadblock you encountered was during recovery? What did you feel like caused most of your frustration? 

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The biggest mental roadblock for me was, you know, after I reinjured my hamstring. And it started to cause a lot more problems. Because at first it was like, it was just my hamstring, it's okay to do all that PT, recovery stuff. But as soon as it started to affect like, more of my body, I was able to do less and less. So it was just, I'm used to always being able to, I'm like, the healthiest out of my friends like I'm always out and about I'm doing something I'm working out or I'm running or playing soccer. And it was just, I just couldn't do anything. I had to sit on the couch all day, watch Netflix like Yeah, that's good to do on weekends. But for seven days a week for like three weeks, it gets a little old.

 

Who was your support system during that injury? Who did you surround yourself with? Or did you try to keep keep yourself in isolation?

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First I didn't really tell a whole lot of people about like how I really feeling about it, I would tell them that I'm in so much pain, just being like a drama queen, pretty much. And then, I mean, it got to a point where it was really taking a toll on me. And then I slowly started to open up to more people started talking to my older brother, I started talking to my girlfriend and I also opened up to my cousin Gage. And honestly, it didn't really hit me because I know my brothers in Houston, and Carrie's in College Station, so I can just text them. But being able to see that person like face to face and Gage is only 20 minutes away. And a lot of times he would just sleep in our apartment because we had an extra room. So there were a lot of nights where like, we were saying for like an hour and a half just talking. It was really good. And then the next morning he'd go work out and I'd do what I could. And it was it was good. I feel like I've gotten I got really close to him. And it really helped me because I was opening up not just about the injury. But I was opening up about, everything pretty much and I'm not a very open person I'm gonna be honest. So, and then he like even he opened up back to me and I was like, Whoa, Okay, All right.

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Was the journey to recovery harder than you initially expected it would be in terms of mental preparedness?

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Yeah, absolutely. After the first time, I pulled my hamstring. I talked with Josh, he said he'd help me, three weeks. So over spring break, I was just doing what he told me to do. He gave me a list of stretches to do every day. And just like I said, So that was it. I couldn't do like actual PT work or get like cups or needles or anything. So after spring break, I came back in. I'm just feeling a little bit better. So I took the next two weeks, I couldn't practice, the first week actually, he wouldn't let me run or really do anything. And it was all just PT work. I go to practice, I help out wherever I could. I come back in and I do PT for 45 minutes. I do that every day. And then on the last week before I could actually play, I was jogging more. I want you to run. Want you to sprint. I want you to run to the other side of the field. And I started to run and he goes "not too fast. Bring it back down." He goes "yeah, that's good. It feels good. But we don't want to push it right now." I said "Oh, okay, I guess you're right." So it was just, it was just being patient with it. And it was good because I was seeing progress. But as soon as I was a month or two after I was done with everything, And I reinjured it and I was like, Well, I don't want to do that again. So I had to go back through the whole process. But it was the summertime, so I didn't have as much access to it. So the recovery took a lot longer. I was still trying to do what I could and I was just doing too much and so really set me back a lot really frustrated me. I remember there was one day where I came in and I talked to Josh, but Josh had told me he's like, I'm you're gonna have to take two weeks off of everything. I said, "What do you mean?" He goes, You can't exercise for two weeks. I know they were telling me I can't do anything. And It's just always, every guy thinks they're bulletproof. Until you're not. And so that really frustrated me and I went home and I was just, fuming, I live literally a minute away cuz I live on campus. five minute drive. I was just like, fuming, I was so mad. I'm the only one who lives there because all my other roommates live in Dallas. But I'm from Houston, so I decided to stay here. I have my whole apartment to myself, So it's pretty nice. But I was I was so frustrated. And I literally I threw my phone on the wood floor. I just like chunked in. And I like yelled the F word. And not even a minute later. I get a text from our PA who was below me. And she texted, hey, into the group chat. So literally my other roommates aren't even there. It's just me. So they all know that it was me. And I pick up my phone and I saw her message and was like Oh, Oh man. I might of crossed the line now like I can't do that again. She was like, hey, I heard someone yell, heard a really loud thud, y'all Okay? and I just responded. I was like, lol yeah I'm good now. Really wasn't though.

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Now that you've kind of overcome your injury, would you would you have changed anything in the process, if you could go back?

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I would really just go back and tell myself to realize, it's not going to be the end of the world. At the beginning of the summer, I wanted to work. Like I want to work my butt off this summer. And just getting really good shape, I know I'm not a field player. But I still wanted to finish in the top three in all our fitness tests, which is really good for a goalkeeper. But, so I was ready to work. And then as soon as that happened, it just flipped a switch in my mind. And if I could go back, and I could just unflip that switch. Like I would, no doubt in my mind, I would easily just go back and just tell myself, you need to take it, take it down a notch. It's not the end of the world, You're going to be okay, No matter what you, what you do from here on out, is going to define, the rest of us Whether or not you take this good. And you try and slowly work into it. I can do it or you take it bad. And you piss and moan for a good month, and then you run back into it and get injured again.

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Would you say that your attitude that you learned from your first injury, your hamstring injury, influenced how you felt about your next one?

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I thin so. That was my first, big injury, when I broke my pinky, there was nothing I couldn't do. I could still go run, I could lift, I just couldn't use my left hand. So I was still able to do like a lot of stuff. And I still felt like I was a part of the team. But after I pulled my hamstring, it was the first real one. And I was a lot more isolated. And I had to deal with it a lot more on my own. So after, I feel like I learned so much more about myself not only physically, but also mentally and I've gotten so much more mentally stronger. So when I dislocated my finger a month ago, after he popped it back in a place. I was like, all right, what's the deal, Josh? And he goes, Well, we'll just tape it up. You'll take the rest of the week off, and you can try and play next week. I was like alright! cool. That was it? I got back on the next week and for the first practice session I taped it up real good. And then I was acting weird, Like, Oh, I don't want it to happen again. And so I felt like the first like couple shots that I took. It was almost like a mental thing. It was like that first time you're jumping into fitness as a kid. So as soon as I jumped in, I was like, all right, that's pretty cool. I can do and I was back into it.

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What is something positive that emerged from that experience?

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It would definitely be the growth that I've made with my friends from opening up. Well, even today, I'm still trying to, open up when I can, Instead of being like, "Oh, yeah, right. End of discussion." And then I think I have gotten a lot closer with Gage, Carrion, and my brother Stephen. And also, I just feel like I've gotten so much more mentally stronger, and I've become a lot more weary of my body. So instead of pushing myself to my limit, and then more, I was like I don't want to risk another injury. I'm just gonna push myself when I can and where it's appropriate. 

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Top 3 Recovery Tips

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1.Don't let your ego get in the way. So with a lot of things, you're going to think that you're better than that. But really, with your injury or what you're going through, You're not going to be your full strength or your full potential. So you're gonna have to take a step down off the pedestal, and you're going to have to accept the fact

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2. Find a benefit in talking to friends, whether or not they're your closest friends, or they're just acquaintances that you know, just take that chance, Open up to them and talk to them.

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3. Just do the work. I know if you're used to doing all these super awesome, like movements, you have all this athletic ability, you get that injury and you're not going to be able to do it anymore. You're gonna have to accept that And you're gonna have to do the work that's prescribed to you as your physical therapy. Whether or not it frustrates you or, or it's gonna make you any more upset. Try to take it as a good thing, you're making progress, no matter how you look at it. So the best way to look at it is with a positive attitude.

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