Don’t Be Like Me!

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What’s up guys?

My name is Caleb Kutsche and I’m a physical therapist at Incline Performance Therapy in Woodstock, Georgia.

I wanted to tell a story about when I was a junior in college and I earned a role as a weekend starting pitcher, which I was really excited about.

I started having pain in the front of my shoulder and it was limiting my performance. The big problem was I didn’t tell my coach that I was hurting.

The result was that my performance started to suffer. I was just trying to be tough and thought the best thing to do to was just push through the pain and continue to play.

What happened? My ERA was garbage. I think it was 5+. It went through the roof and I didn’t win very many games.

The worst part, by far, were the playoffs. I ended up getting benched! The reason I got benched was because my coach didn’t think I had the stuff to perform, and justifiably so because my performance had not been good. He didn’t know that I had been hurting the whole season.

Looking back, if I would have just communicated and told him early in the season that my shoulder was hurting, he probably would have given me a week or two to recover. This would have given me some time to rehab and do some physical therapy and I would have been able to come back stronger. Then I would’ve been able to play in the playoffs when it really counted.

I say all this to encourage y’all to communicate with your coaches. They want what is best for you and they want what’s best for the team and if they know that you’re having a shoulder issue, they would much rather have you at 100% at the end of the season, in the playoffs, rather than some midweek game at the beginning of the season.

So I encourage all my athletes that I work with just to communicate with your coaches, they are going to listen to you. They are not gonna take your spot and give it to somebody else they are going to be fair. You were good enough to earn a spot on the team, and if you say you’re at 100% they are going to give you a chance when you come back

I hope this is encouraging for y’all it is something I lived through and I’d much rather see y’all playing in the playoffs and performing at a high level rather than on the bench because your arms been hurting all season and you never told anyone.

Click Here to watch the video version.