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Mechelle Lewis Freeman had put everything on the line to achieve her Olympic dream. She’d walked away from a successful career in advertising, moved to a full-time training facility, and calculated everything from the hours of sleep she needed to the grams of protein she ingested to the positive mantras running through her head. (The…

Chris Mosier has made history many times before, as the first transgender athlete to represent the United States in international competition, appear in the ESPN Body Issue, and be sponsored by Nike.   This January, he once again blazed a trail at the Olympic Trials for the 50K racewalk, becoming the first transgender athlete to…

Basketball, ski racing, sprint kayaking, surfing—Alana Nichols‘ athletic career has brought her to the highest levels of a wide range of sports. Still, she tells us on this week’s show, as a Paralympian she often struggled to get the same care for her injuries as her able-bodied peers. But fight she did, and her advocacy…

Note: This episode was recorded several months ago, before the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, and the protests that have followed. So, we start it off with a statement about Black Lives Matter, systemic racism, and our commitment to examine our own role and make changes. The second time Amanda Ferranti…

We first spoke with this week’s guest, pro distance runner Alia Gray, in person during Olympic Marathon Trials weekend in February in Atlanta. She’d chosen not to run the race despite a qualifying time and an injury-free stretch—a choice made from joy rather than fear, she says, and one she describes at length in this…

In slalom water skiing, Matteo Luzzeri says, “you’re playing tug of war against a 6.2-liter engine boat.” Injury—both from overuse and from sudden, traumatic events—comes with the territory.   On this week’s episode, Matteo shares the story of his most serious injury, a ruptured Achilles in September 2014. The experience was all the more challenging…

Season 3, Episode 25 | Cindy and Carrie on the Rebound Lifestyle, mid-Pandemic This podcast—and our book Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries—exist primarily to teach mental skills to sidelined athletes. But we’ve always known these lessons and techniques can transcend injury, and even sports performance. It’s one of the…

Angie Fifer first enrolled at Penn State with a plan to become an athletic trainer. But during a class in sport psychology, she felt a tear roll down her cheek. Instantly, she knew she’d found her calling—to prevent other athletes from having the same experience she had. When she was 16 and an aspiring gymnast,…

After overcoming multiple injuries to qualify for the 2016 Olympics in the nick of time, 5,000-meter runner Jessica O’Connell faced another series of setbacks as she prepared for the Games.    When she arrived in Rio, she was tempted to view her situation as an anomaly. But the more she talked to other athletes, the…

Jen A. Miller has been writing about running for The New York Times since 2010. The first article on the sport she published there had to do with injury—”dead butt syndrome,” specifically. Last year, she sustained another serious setback, a stress fracture in her tibia. In the weekly running newsletter she now writes for the…