Transcription of Deb Arthur for the show Head Games #53
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast show number 53, “Head games” airing for the first time on September 16th 2012 on WLOB and WPEI Radio, Portland, Maine. Today’s guest include Dr. James Glazer of Coastal Orthopedics and Sport Medicine, Rob McDonald graduate of Cape Elizabeth high school and current Harvard University student, and also Deb Arthur, who has a doctorate in physical education and a masters in science who currently works at The Body Architect.
Each of our guests will help us explore the theme of the head and how it intersects with the body as in mind, body, and spirit. Dr. James Glazer will give us more of a clinical eye and some history on concussions and what it means to have a traumatic brain injury while playing sports or in other parts of one’s life. Rob McDonald is going to give us a more personal view of this as he describes an episode that took place during his first year of college while playing rugby, a head injury which certainly had an impact on his own life. And Deb Arthur will really bring the idea of mind and body back around again for us. We hope that you enjoy our show today. Please let us know what you think.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is pleased to be sponsored by the University of New England. As part of our collaboration we feature a segment we call Wellness Innovations. This week’s Wellness Innovation focuses on head injuries.
It’s interesting concussion rates and prevention strategies at all levels continue to grow, one population that appears to have increasing head injury rates is collegiate football players. Research presented recently at the American Orthopedics Society for Sports Medicine annual meeting in Baltimore highlights that concussion rate in three college football programs has doubled in recent years. The increase comes after a 2010 NCAA concussion management initiative that requires athletic programs to report concussion signs and symptoms and then remove players from play. For more information on this Wellness Innovation visit d-o-c-t-o-rlisa.org. For more information on the University of New England visit une.edu.
Dr. Lisa: As part of our “Head Games” show we are spending time with Deb Arthur who happens to have a lot of experience both in her head and in her life with sports, and sports medicine, and personal training. She actually has a doctorate in physical education and a master in science. She’s well versed. She knows all about the academics behind sports. We thought we’d bring her in and talk a little bit about what she knows, her mind, body connection experience, her own personal experience with all of this, and just see where this conversation goes. Thanks for coming in Deb.
Deb: Thank you for having me.
Dr. Lisa: Deb first of all what does it mean to have a doctorate in physical education? What type of education is required? What’s the coursework and the background?
Deb: At Springfield College is considered a generalist degree so we actually get a taste of a lot of different things from exercise physiology to psychology to management. I chose to focus in the area sports psychology and measurement and have found it actually to be incredibly useful. Kind of wish I knew that stuff when I was a competitive athlete myself, very actually kind of basic stuff, but really useful in life in general and particularly in athletics.
Dr. Lisa: I want to ask you about the sports psychology and measurement. Tell me about your experience as a professional athlete.
Deb: Okay, well not professional though that would’ve been nice. I trained in Boston when I was at UMAS Amherst as an undergraduate I played soccer and then I got into rowing crew and was invited to development camps, national team development camps, so I decided that it was something I loved and I continued it even after college. I went to Boston, rode in the Charles River and trained for national team. For me and for all of us that were training, it was our life, it was everything. We worked so we could row.
The mindset as an athlete was to push as hard as you can and basically shift your mind away from your body. When you row crew in particular, incredibly uncomfortable and painful when you’re racing, your legs are burning, your chest is burning. So you learn to separate from yourself so that you can keep going. I’m making it sound all bad, I mean there’s a rhythm in the body and in the boat that you get into and you just try to flow with that and that’s pretty amazing. But initially you really have to separate.
There was times I would get out of the boat and I’d have cuts all up my leg from the boat, didn’t even notice while I was rowing. So it’s overtime as I’ve gotten older that I’ve shifted away from that separating from what’s going on in my body and coming back into my body, and realizing how important it is. Don’t know, it’s sort of an interesting concept to know if we could teach that to athletes. But that’s probably another topic. So that experience of doing really separate from my body in order to achieve excellence and now coming back into body so I can be tuned into what’s right for my body and what’s safe and what’s comfortable is a really different kind of experience.
Dr. Lisa: So sports psychology and measurement, what do you measure?
Deb: Measurement it’s measuring psychological variables. So what our focus was in my program was to create psychological tools not for a diagnosis of any kind of mental illness but for measuring motivation, persistence was a new topic at the time. My focus was on perceived physical self competence. Thank you. So what I did I was focusing on kids at the time. My theory was that girls tend to have really low sense of self-confidence in their physical selves, and so I created a measuring tool where I looked at boys and girls and compared how they perceive themselves physically. So that was where my focus was at the time.
Dr. Lisa: Why did you become interested in that?
Deb: I was always interested in body image and athletes and particularly interested in how females feel about themselves physically because we live in a culture that really promotes physical appearance is how women value themselves. So I was curious to look at the factors that influenced girls in particular tend to be self-apparent. But I was interested to see if we could somehow change their perception of their physical self through physical activity. Now I didn’t go far, far, far with this research. I just really did the basic doctoral work, so I didn’t take it with me and try to make a change in young girls, but that was my interest at the time, to create that tool so we could create a tool to measure perception.
Dr. Lisa: Did you become interested in that in part because you have your own daughters?
Deb: I didn’t have my daughters then. I think just being an athlete and knowing how that benefited me. When I was a young girl, this is going into a different direction a tiny bit, but physical education was boys and girls, and we were separate and then title nine came and everything became united. So it was really hard as an elementary school kid to start playing with the boys because they were stronger and faster, and I just remember I was always the super star, and then when I had to play with the boys I was no longer the super star. So my sense of self, my sense of physical ability were shut down a bit just in comparison to the boys.
Dr. Lisa: No, that’s really helpful. So you saw a shift before and after this was put in place.
Deb: I did, I was very aware of it as a child too. I was very aware that I did not feel as good about my physical ability when I was playing with the boys as well because they were stronger and faster.
Dr. Lisa: Well this brings me to something that we had talked with Dr. Glazer about from Coastal Orthopedics and he was talking with us earlier about concussions and athletes who get a concussion and have to rest and then have to slowly come back into being athletes again. I mean you can talk about one side of it, which is people who maybe haven’t had as much experience with their bodies.
Deb: Or they’re older.
Dr. Lisa: Or they’re older and it’s just something that they need to get back into. What about the athletes who have been consistently athletic and then all of a sudden they have to stop?
Deb: It’s incredibly challenging. I never had a concussion. I don’t think. Knock on wood. I don’t think I did, but I injured my back very badly in rowing and it is the hardest thing to do, to be this powerhouse and able bodied and then to suddenly be on your injured bed for a couple of weeks because you can’t do anything. It would be great for coaches to be able to all have their way of helping the athlete through it, but it’s going to have to be about baby steps for them and that’s the hardest thing, but such a great learning for them if they can do it. And then as they take the baby steps into being back, into being full force as an athlete, they can then look over the past experience and they can see how it got them back to where they wanted to be.
But athletes aren’t taught to do that. They’re taught to just go as hard as they can every time. So that’s a challenging one. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could allow athletes to be so tuned into themselves that they didn’t do anything to hurt themselves. It’s so counter to the athletic culture though. The athletic culture is all about push, push, push, go faster, go faster, go faster, hit harder, hit harder. So that would be a whole cultural change to have athletes coming from what feels right in their body first.
A concussion is different in that there’s impact to their head, but the need to slow down to come back is definitely a challenge. I think that the answer to that is just a challenge. And sometimes we humans have to say, “I don’t want it to be this way but what I can I learn from this, and how can I grow from this, and how can I become a better athlete from this progression, I have to go through in order to get myself back to competitive status.”
Dr. Lisa: I know that my daughter had an ACL injury last summer. She actually had it last playing lacrosse, and then all summer long after her surgery she wasn’t able to do anything except for physical therapy. And this is a three season sport swimming, soccer, and she had to sit out for the entire sophomore season of soccer, and it really impacted her in a big way. I saw her go through some significant I would say it’s an adjustment reaction, but other people might know it as almost a minor depression.
Deb: Right and the thing with a knee injury and head injury you can’t do anything that is impactful anymore until it’s healed. And I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know if they could do other activities that aren’t impactful. I mean for an ACL injury she could be doing upper body, she could be doing core, so that she feels like she’s doing something and she’s keeping part of her body strong, do you know what I mean? That gives them a sense that they’re still accomplishing something physical even though she can’t use her legs.
Dr. Lisa: I think she did do that. I think for her. And now she’s back and she’s playing and I’m so proud of her for all the work that she did to get to this place because she had to deal with the psychology of it, the emotions of it. I’m probably more proud of that than any of her “accomplishments” as an athlete. But I think one of the things that she missed the most was the sense of playing on a team, was a sense of camaraderie, and it’s something you can sit on the sidelines and watch your team, but you’re not really a part of it unless you’re actually out there. It’s a very interesting thing that happens when you’re extracted from something you’ve known for a long time, that crowd mentality.
Deb: I go to this philosophical place which I know is easier for us to have a chat about and for your daughter to perhaps feel better. But everything that happens in our lives provides us with an opportunity for learning. So what she was able to experience was that contrast and now when she goes back to soccer, wow, does she appreciate it and is she grateful more so than she was beforehand probably.
I don’t know what her processing is with it, but could talk to her about it. But well, we just take things for granted. We all do, we take things for granted and then when something is changed in our life like a concussion, an injury now we feel kind of lost and bummed out, and oh pardon me, and this stinks. But if we can step back and go, “Okay, I don’t want this to happen, but you know what, when I’m better and I get back into this I am going to really be grateful for this, and I’m going to love every minute of my athletic experience.”
What’s interesting is that as we get older people have a similar experience because I’ve had clients, men and women, who have been athletic when they were younger. Now they’re getting older and their body doesn’t do the same things. So it’s not as abrupt as an injury. It’s more long term and incremental. But that sort of sense like, “Wow, I can’t do what I used to do.” That’s when I always tell people, “Well, let’s honor this. Let’s listen to your body and let’s find what you can do with where you are right now and progress you to another place.” But we can’t live with what was. I mean just we just can’t.
Dr. Lisa: I think that that is a perfect way to conclude a conversation about “Head Games” which has been far reaching and has had really some wonderful nuggets from somebody who has herself been an athlete at a pretty high level, but now lends wisdom to people at various levels of athleticism. So thank you for coming in.
Deb: Thank you.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve been talking to Deb Arthur who’s now at The Body Architect.
Deb: Thank you so much, I appreciate it.