The 2019-20 NBA regular season has been frozen in carbonite like all other professional sports due to the covid-19 pandemic in March. It is scheduled to restart July 31st in the home of Disney, Orlando, Florida. One major step to ensure the safety and health of all involved will be usage of the Oura ring; all staff will wear one, and all players off court will wear one. It is being used to monitor temperature, a key differentiator of this ring, and a key flag for the coronavirus.

This really is about a journey of self-talk, education and reflection; Luca was his own study test, his own experiment. Now he wanted to find out how to solve the experiment…to fix his knee and get back playing the game that he loved…craved for…longed for. As WB Yeats once famously said… “education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire” - a fire had been lit to find out how the parts of his body worked together in harmony without pain or dysfunction.

Many questions were not answered, or not asked. Advice was given, but perhaps inappropriate advice. As Stephen Covey says, “seek first to understand then be understood”. At the age of 26, Luca became obsessed to find out the missing pieces of the puzzle and solve the knee problem once and for all. He had lost confidence in many people but not in himself. His journey of self-awareness was only beginning.

Tiger winning the green jacket in Augusta National last year was an amazing feat of physical and mental resiliency. Everyone has read about the surgeries and his back saga. Rory McIlroy has spoken about how his personal gym conditioning regime focusing around strength development, mobility, prehab and activation is vital for him to avoid developing back pain - something that crept in when he was younger, starting on the professional circuit. Most golfers will experience some form of back pain or stiffness at some point. The retaining of form, posture and mobility are essential ingredients to focus on to avoid having to spend time with a physiotherapist like me. Prevention is the key and incorporating specific practices of motility in your warm-up and sessions off the course will really stand to you.

I have seen many golfers in clinic in London and Dublin, and have been fortunate to treat a few professional players on the European tour - most notably the South African George Coetzee. I see the value in an effective warm-up in order to prepare the player physically and mentally for the round. It is essential. The best players on the planet are vigorous in readying themselves before walking to the first tee box. If you have ever attended the Open or the any major pro golf event, watch and study what players like Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas do before they take that initial swing.

This is a story about a young man who is pursuing the dream to get back playing the game he loves.

Meet Gianluca Deodato - a French-born footballer who has suffered so many serious injuries already, starting in 2008, when he was 14 years old. He dislocated his left knee cap and was out 6 months after the operation. That was his first taste of rehabilitation, and the trials and tribulations that come with it. He returned to football in 2009 but had recurrences of instability and pain over the next two years; a surgeon even recommended that young Gianluca should quit football forever, at 15 - not take a break and get stronger…but quit.

Patellar tendinopathy - not quite the bane of my basketball career but not far off…It all started when I was 15 years old and playing basketball for Ireland. I suffered a dead leg into my left thigh, which became myositis ossificans, a calcification in the belly of my quad muscle- a severe “corked thigh”, “dead leg” or “charley horse”. I got over that and got back playing but I consequently developed “jumper’s knee”; I know…that’s a lot of slang terms and quotation marks - apologies. Bear with me…this will be worth the read.

Pause a minute… and think about some athletes who have strained or significantly pulled their hamstring over the years and what impact it had on their respective career, physical and mental wellbeing; Michael Owen was never as explosive after he ruptured his hamstring. It ended Paul O’Connell’s career in Cardiff against France in the rugby world cup. Chris Paul in the NBA lost that first step speed, Daniel Sturridge, a player of pace, ended up losing much of that pace. The Tipperary hurling defender Cathal Barrett missed a Munster hurling final pulling the muscle, Bernard Brogan, the Dublin Gaelic football star has suffered with this injury. I could write down 1 million examples, maybe more. And that’s just within the sporting world.

We have seen first-hand from our experience working in physiotherapy and sports medicine that it is easy to communicate well but so easily to communicate poorly. Being curious that bit longer, asking more questions and being an engaged listener feed into getting a more accurate and truthful answer.

A vital and crucial, usually under-valued missing link in the rehabilitation pathway is that of improving movement fluidity and neuromuscular control competency from start to finish with hydrotherapy as a key ingredient.

As a sports medicine physiotherapist clinician, I treat many recreational and professional athletes every day. I can't help but feel the psychological aspects of an injury are often grossly underestimated and overlooked.

Forty percent of athletes who undergo ACL reconstructive surgery do not return to pre-injury performance levels, and 65 percent don't return to competitive sport at all. Furthermore, those who do return to play have a high risk of re-injury.

The definition of rehabilitation is "to restore to useful life, as through therapy and education…to restore to good condition, operation or capacity" (Thompson 1995). Rehabilitation is indeed easy to do badly, and difficult to do well.

Interview with Leinster and Ireland number 8 professional rugby player Caelan Doris during the COVID-19 lockdown in Ireland.