– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

This was me five months ago.

This was me two days later.

This was me 3 months ago.

And well, this is me now. To give you

some context, 5 months ago, my family

and I went on a skiing trip. I've been

skiing since I was 6 years old. And so

naturally, I assumed this trip would be

no different to the others. Except it

wasn't. It was shorter. On day two, I

lost control of my skis on dangerous

terrain and was hurtled halfway down the

mountain.

I was then carried down by ski patrol

and taken to the nearest hospital where

I was then told that I had torn my ACL

miniscus, fractured my tibia and thumb,

and had partially torn my MCL and LCL.

At first, I wasn't upset or annoyed at

all. That came later. I was simply

naive.

Initially, I had no idea how difficult,

how long the recovery process would be.

that I would have to miss school for

physio, that I wouldn't be able to take

public transport, put my own shoes on,

or even take a shower.

In fact, I realized that I knew nothing

about ACL injuries, and I started to

wonder,

why did no one warn me?

Why wasn't I told that this could

happen? Today, we're going to question

three central issues around ACL

injuries.

How can we start rethinking ACL

research? Why do we only train for

performance and not prevention? And is

recovery more science or story?

Now, some of you might be thinking,

"This doesn't apply to me. I barely make

it up a flight of stairs and haven't

played sports since school."

Well, it does because ACL injuries don't

only occur in athletes. ACL injuries can

happen to anyone any time. Now, some

people are certainly more susceptible to

ACL injuries than others, but we'll get

on to that later. So, don't zone out

because I am certainly no athlete and I

was just on a ski holiday.

I conducted a survey here at Francis

Holland where I asked students in year

12 what they thought an ACL was and

turns out only 20% of students got it

right. The ACL is the anterior cruciate

ligament, i.e. a ligament in your knee.

Now, I didn't just pick our age group

because they were the easiest for me to

reach and badger to complete my survey,

but rather because our age group has one

of the highest ACL incidence rates

globally. As well as this, teens are 29

times more likely to have ACL surgery

today versus 20 years ago. And I found

it worrying that only 20% of us knew

what an ACL was, let alone the impact it

could have.

Women are three to six times more likely

to rupture their ACL than men.

Most would argue that this is probably

related to the menstrual cycle. People

love to blame the fluctuation in female

hormones. Even when the Australian Rules

Football League noticed their players

were experiencing high ACL injury rates,

their default response was to only

investigate its association with the

menstrual cycle. Now, I don't want to

disregard the fluctuation in female

hormones and what that might have on ACL

in incidence rates and ligament laxity,

but I'd argue that reducing women's

injury risks to biological factors only

causes us to disregard the root cause of

ACL injuries, which is likely to be

strongly influenced by gendered

environmental disparities.

For example, we can categorize the risk

factors for ACL injuries into two

groups, intrinsic and exttrinsic.

Typical intrinsic and sexbased

biological factors include anatomy,

hormones, and genetics, while exttrinsic

factors include weather conditions, and

playing surfaces.

What I have noticed is that the majority

of ACL literature focuses on these

intrinsic factors with minimal

recognition towards external,

environmental or social factors despite

how closely linked they are.

For example,

muscular strength is an intrinsic factor

which impacts ACR incidence rates.

Labeling it as intrinsic suggests it's

unaffected by any external factors or

social factors, which simply isn't the

case. As environments like the gym and

prevention training programs are still

heavily gendered in ways that discourage

and disadvantage female participation.

We must question how gender norms about

girls body participation in sports and

funding influence girls attitudes

towards sports, body movements and

attitudes towards prevention training

and how this impacts injury risk.

Moving on to prevention versus

performance.

Studies show that when women

participated in dedicated prevention

training, they experienced a significant

67% decrease in non-cont ACL injuries.

The issue here is that despite how

effective these prevention training

programs clearly proved to be, they

still suffered from low levels of

commitment once this structure and

supervision disappeared, which I believe

is unfortunately due to the

misconception that stretching and

warming up is time consuming and

requires a lot of commitment. Similarly,

in schools, for example, at a

recreational level, prevention training

might include stretching or warming up

before a PE lesson. We've all done it,

but the question is, do we know why we

do it? Do we know why it's so important?

And would we implement this practice

into our lives beyond school?

Power Up to Play is an exceptional

charity that showcases not only the

importance of warming up, but why we do

it and are at the forefront of knee

injury prevention training programs in

adolescence specifically.

For example, feel free to join in. I

know we've been sitting for a while, but

don't worry, I won't be offended if you

don't. This stretch, although it looks

silly, is strengthening important

muscles and reinforcing strong body

positions.

And I know that despite this

presentation, you might still think that

stretching and warming up is still

tedious. But I promise you that it is

worth it. And if there is one thing that

I could have changed about that day 5

months ago, it would have been to just

take five 10 minutes to warm up to

prevent a year of recovery and a

lifetime of worrying about early onset

osteoarthritis.

To conduct effective prevention training

and reduce ACL injury rates, we need to

consider that both biological and social

factors are at play.

As I previously mentioned, strength

training is another form of prevention

training. The issue here is that women

still participate in strength training

at a much lower rate than men, which is

unfortunately due to the gender norms

about how a woman's body is supposed to

look and the stereotype that

weightlifting is for men.

To conduct effective prevention

training, as I said, we need to begin

conducting a more holistic approach and

tackle the gender norms baked into

women's sports.

Now, let's talk about my recovery.

Despite the fact I'm only five months

into a 12-month recovery program, I

think I've learned a lot. And I think

I've developed a lot as a person in ways

I didn't think I would. To give you a

very surface level example, I have

become very oddly appreciative of the

small things like being able to walk

quickly if you're running late

somewhere.

As they say, recovery is all about

finding the positives, which are

definitely hard to find at first, but

they do exist. For example, I didn't

have to get on the tube at rush hour

every morning for 4 months. I'm cycling

now, and in a couple months, I'll be

running. So, to answer my question,

recovery is definitely more of a mental

game than a physical game. Of course,

your knee hurts and you need to do your

physio. But when you start focusing more

on your mentality, suddenly physio

becomes a break from school work and you

realize that the pain is just temporary.

Injuries break you down, sure, but I

think injuries also rebuild you stronger

and smarter. And in my case, a story to

tell at TEDex. Thank you.