How Do You Cheer Up an Injured Figure Skater?

I feel for the injured person, mainly because I am injured – fracutred arm. But, I don’t compete and I am a beginner.

My first instinct: oh, poor baby. You’re not in too much pain, are you Isabellem1998?

Past that, I’m pretty worthless. I hope you get your cast off soon and can be back on the ice!

I’m not too good with the cheering up either, and since all my kids are boys, they REALLY don’t like the poor baby routine. I usually bake goodies like cookies and brownies, and spend more time with the injured child playing games, doing jigsaw puzzles, watching a movie, etc. to fill up the time that would have been spent in their sport. When you’re busy, you don’t have time to dwell on your injury and what you’re missing out on. So I would try to spend time doing things with your friend to help keep her mind off the skating that she’s missing.

Unfortunately injuries are part of any sport. I saw on the US website yesterday that Emily Samuelson and Evan Bates have had to withdraw from the Grand Prix series because during a practice, her blade caught his Achilles tendon and severed it.

I am not good at this at all either. It is very difficult when you spend a year working hard and getting better and then don’t get to compete because of an injury. I mean, I suppose the best that can be said is that it’s not a permanent injury, she will get to skate again. I understand the depression though, I don’t know what much can help with that. Sometimes it just takes a lot of time to get through things like this. And I can’t speak for others, but when people try to cheer me up it just puts me in a worse mood, because I feel like they think I should not be as upset as I am and like I am overreacting to situations that are important to me.

Wow, this is tough for your friend. I think it’s best to acknowledge that it stinks an not try to find a silver lining right away. Give your friend time to let out their frustrations in the first week or so. She will make peace with it. Then ask how you can spend time together doing something you both will enjoy. Remember, not only is she missing the regionals, she will be missing the ice for a few weeks and all the friends at the rink.

I think this is the toughest part from a parent perspective: how to deal with a kid who can’t be on the ice.

I think for Regionals, maybe a bait-n-switch approach would be good. Can’t go to Regionals? Awesome! Let’s go shopping in Chicago. Let’s go to an amusement park (if the kid is able). Let’s do something amazingly fun instead. Maybe a huge party with school friends?

And then, what do you do with the stir-crazy kid after Regionals, but before she can return to the rink? A sleep over with her rink friends? Mini-golf with the rink friends? A swim party? Something fun.

[...] IceMom.net: How Do You Cheer Up an Injured Figure Skater? [...]

Been reading for a while and this is the first column I really felt i needed to reply. I’ve been figure skating since I was 3 and have been skating now for a total of 18 years. When I was 12, my coached noticed I was jumping less and less and seemed far less interested on working on my doubles he couldn’t figure out why until he saw me leave the rink with a limp (I wasn’t aware I was limping). The next day my coach got my mom to stay (she often left to do shopping for food and whatnot, and I enjoyed skating enough that I was motivated enough to do it without my mom around), my coach made me try a few simple jumps close to the boards, and both him and my mom noticed that I’d greatly wince in pain when I landed.

After that my coach sent me off the ice and my mom took me to the doctors, turned out, I had petal-formal syndrome and tendinitis. Basically due to my skating I had worn away all the cartilage in my knees and now my bone for the tracking of the knees were starting to be come roughed edge and thus was also impacting the tracking of my knees so causing my tendons to swell to compensate for the off tracking. I was told I might need surgery to help reline my knees and a cartilage clear out to help cushion my knees, but I was lucky that intensive physiotherapy meant I didn’t need it.

The sad part was I had to stay off the ice and all my other sports for at least 8 moths (I went 7 month then I went back to skating, but 7 months was still a really long time!). But when I told my coach I can remember bawling my eyes out, I was so disappointed to be missing the season, and what he told me then helped me not go crazy with missing skating. “You’re better off missing this time to recover from your injuries, rather then continue skating for a bit longer and then permanently injuring yourself so much that you can’t skate ever again.”

It sucked but it was the truth. As much as all you parents want to give us the poor baby routine, what most of us want is for our mom’s and dad’s to hold our hand quietly and tell us the truth about situations, and then coming up with an alternative plan of action if skating has to be missed.

Between my mom, my coach and my physiotherapist they developed an off ice program to help me strength my muscles, get rid of the muscle in-balance that figure skating had created and a way for me to be productive to my sport and let out all my extra energy.

Being injured and not being allowed on the ice sucks, but its better off then skating with injuries and permanently messing up yourself for life and likely forcing you to have to quit skating due to chronic pain.

Oh, you poor baby!

See? That’s all I have.

No, I agree with you, Pancakeempress. I think parents should be straight with their kids. However, my being straight with Ice Girl always ends up in a big sob session. Well, no. It ends up with Ice Girl kicking me out because I’m not helping. Blah, blah, blah.

It’s good to know that off-ice and physical therapy helped fill the gap for you. I’m really glad that your coach was watching you and called your mother’s attention to your problem.

Really? No knock-knock jokes? I thought you people would be all over this one.

Isabelle, me too! I fell last Tuesday, i’ll be in a cast and off ice for at least a month. I am totally weepy today, and bored out of my mind.

Well, I took my daughter to see ALL THAT SKATE yesterday (where we ran into another skater, higher level even, in a full leg cast with the same orthopedist) so oddly a skating show (not regionals though) was very helpful in the cheering up department. Also the fact that they whisked her around the arena in a wheelchair and gave her special seating! She’s had all the play dates she’s missed over the past 3 years, so I’ll bet a friend taking her friend to a movie on opening weekend or to the mall could help cheer her up. I’ve also spent a lot of money on “silly bandz” but not compared to what I was spending on skating!! Tomorrow it will be 5 weeks since the fall and Friday she gets a shorter, possibly walking, cast. THAT will cheer her up more than anything I’ve done.

I’m the one who asked Ice Mom the question, guys. Thanks for all the great advice. I tried lots of stuff you suggested and showed my friend this post, and it really seemed to cheer her up, but then the one thing you couldnt suggest happened – her mom told her she was having a little baby brother/sister. Now shes smiling all over her face <3

I’m getting my cast thingy off in 2 weeks – I’m going skating as soon as possible.

Thank you, Ice Mom.

Hey, I just found this yesterday through Google looking for ways to cheer up an injured skater. I’m not a skater myself but my friend is and she loves it. She was all set to go to really big competitions this year (she had one in Slovenia), but she has this recurring knee problem that resulted in her having her 6th knee operation. She was inconsolable when she found out she was going to need more surgery, but after reading this post I took the advice of going shopping (we’re in London UK, so we went to Oxford Street lol). Thank you so much for this post, I wouldn’t have known what to do if I hadn’t read it!

This helps me a lot too because I broke my ankle about 3 weeks ago and can’t skate until probably March because I will need physical therapy for my ankle so I don’t reinjure it.

I am an adult skater who has been skating for over five years. Almost two weeks ago I fell while doing a bracket and now have a partial tear in my PCL in my left knee. The doctor says I can not skate on it for 6-8 weeks. This means I am going to miss going to Adult Nationals. This would have been the first time I had ever gone and I am so dissapointed. Because my knee has to remain imobile I can’t really do any cardio work. Any advice on how to deal with this situation? Any advice on what exercises I can be doing that will help me with ice skating while I am injured? I feel for all of those skaters that are injured and have to miss important events.