{"id":26431,"date":"2024-07-12T09:41:23","date_gmt":"2024-07-12T09:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=26431"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:10:55","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:10:55","slug":"i-cant-help-believing-im-going-to-make-it-back-cristen-press-on-her-acl-rehab","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/i-cant-help-believing-im-going-to-make-it-back-cristen-press-on-her-acl-rehab\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I Can’t Help Believing I’m Going to Make it Back’ – Cristen Press on her ACL Rehab"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 12 Jul 2024 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

‘I Can’t Help Believing I’m Going to Make it Back’ – Cristen Press on her ACL Rehab<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Category<\/div>\n Data & Innovation<\/a> <\/div>\n
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https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/i-cant-help-believing-im-going-to-make-it-back-cristen-press-on-her-acl-rehab\/<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n\n\n\n
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The double world champion also spoke about how she uses data monitoring in her daily life and the new series of the podcast she co-hosts with USNT teammate Tobin Heath.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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A Data & Innovation article brought to you by<\/p>\n

\"sport<\/h6>\n
By Joe Lemire<\/h6>\n
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You can\u2019t have a discussion about sports technology today without including athletes in that conversation. Their partnerships, investments and endorsements help fuel the space \u2013 they have emerged as major stakeholders in the sports tech ecosystem. The Athlete’s Voice series highlights the athletes leading the way and the projects and products they\u2019re putting their influence behind.
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Christen Press, the all-time leading goal scorer in Stanford history, has starred for club and country since graduating in 2010. With the USWNT, she has won two World Cups and scored 64 international goals. Press has played overseas professionally, including a stint at Manchester United, as well as in the NWSL with the Chicago Red Stars, Utah Royals and currently with Angel City FC<\/a>.<\/h6>\n

After tearing her ACL in June 2022, Press required four surgeries and an arduous recovery. She returned to her first training session in early June, after which she spoke to SBJ about her rehab and the new season of her podcast. Along with Tobin Heath, Megan Rapinoe and Meghan Klingenberg, Press founded a media and lifestyle brand called RE\u2014INC in 2019. She and Heath are the co-hosts of the The RE-CAP Show podcast<\/a>, which returned for its third season on June 13. The first episode includes appearances by USWNT legend Abby Wambach and author and podcast host Glennon Doyle.<\/p>\n

On returning to the pitch…
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\nI am currently in the car driving home from my first training. I would say the road to recovery happens very slow, and then yet it happens all at once. I have been back in the team environment for almost four months. So it’s been a long time that I’ve been integrated into the environment, and it took four months for me to get ready to be in a warmup and a passing pattern \u2014 really simple, basic stuff. And I felt very ready for it. I felt almost underwhelmed by how easy it was because I’ve done a lot more complicated things, and yet it was also entirely overwhelming and joyful to be so connected to my teammates and be celebrated in the way that I have been these last two days.<\/p>\n

I’m very grateful for that. They say it’s the hope that kills you, and as I drive home, I just have this big smile on my face because I can’t help it. I can’t help hoping. I can’t help believing that I’m going to make it back, and it’s going to be everything that I see in my head. I’m relentlessly optimistic, I’m naively positive, and I like that about myself, and I don’t intend to change it. I think the way that it left me feeling was just like, yes, I can do this.<\/p>\n

On monitoring her rehab…
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\nI’m a person of devices, so I have quite a toolkit, I’d say, of ways that we’re tracking and measuring. The truth is we’re really still working through issues with my knee, and I have chronic scarring of the knee, so I can experience some discomfort and some swelling that could lead to more scarring, which is incredibly rare, because most people don’t scar after a couple months after their surgery. I’m now over nine months for my surgery and still at risk of scarring. So it just means that I have to try very carefully with how much impact my knee can take.<\/p>\n

We’re being careful, but we’re progressing. In terms of my overall fitness, what my GPS has said is that I’ve got to like 60% of a match load, which is all that I really need to get in terms of volume. And yet, in the warmup and the passing pattern today, it felt like I played a 90-minute game. I was so fatigued. There’s training, and then there\u2019s really training. There’s no way to get fit for football, except for playing football. And I’ve done a ton of running, I’ve done a ton of lifting, and now it’s time to play.<\/p>\n

On how deep she gets into data…
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\nMy performance staff would laugh because they said they’ve never worked with a player that cares so much. So right now, I wear a Polar Watch that I was given in like 2015 from the national team. It’s just old school. And I wear my Apple Watch, which is connected to my GPS so I can see all my data live, from heart rate to distance to speed to all that. And then I do sleep with an Oura ring \u2014 although I’m not endorsing any of these products, I’m not connected to any of these products \u2014 but I do sleep with an Oura ring and track my sleep and my stress levels.<\/p>\n

On season three of the podcast…
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\nOur show really is about authenticity, and it’s about creating a more inclusive space for sports and including diversity of perspective. And so that means we have hard conversations, and we have honest conversations and we have vulnerable conversations, and we have a lot of fun \u2014 the same spirit and joy that you saw last year during the World Cup edition of the show. We’re back, and we’re bigger than ever.<\/p>\n

On the origin of the creating the podcast…
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\nI never thought I would be in media. I think that’s even more true of Tobin. There’s two typical paths for athletes after soccer, and it\u2019s coaching and broadcast. \u2018So Christen, do you want to be a coach?\u2019 \u2018No.\u2019 \u2018So Christen, then you must want to be a broadcaster? I was like, \u2018No.\u2019<\/p>\n

That’s an interesting part of the story, but first and foremost, we decided to launch this show as current and active players, and that’s unique and different. It’s not really a stepping-back-from-soccer thing. It’s current players trading stories and having a little bit more space to dictate the narrative.<\/p>\n

And then secondly, we really approach this as business leaders. This is our business, this is our company. We are a 3C company: content, community and commerce. The most amazing thing about women’s sports is the community, and we’re trying to build the coolest women’s sports community in the world in our membership, and we’re feeding that with amazing content.<\/p>\n

And I think because we have such an authentic and vulnerable relationship with our audience that we’ve developed over the last five years that we’ve been building this business, it made sense for Tobin and I to be our first piece of content that was really more large scale and more widely accessible. But the plan will be to find like-minded people that sit at the intersection of sports, progress and equity, to continue to hear stories from an insider’s perspective. It really disrupts the industry in that way.<\/p>\n

On topics they plan to cover in season three…
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\nWe’re going to be talking about women’s health, particularly in sport, which is obviously a really hot topic, and representation in sport \u2014 how we make it more diverse and equitable for more people, be it across the gender spectrum, the orientation spectrum, across different races and classes. I think that’s incredibly important. Soccer in America is an upper-middle class sport, and almost everywhere else in the world, it’s a very accessible sport that’s found on the street. That’s really the spirit of football, so that’s really important to us.<\/p>\n

On the role of athletes as activists…
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\nThe interesting thing about the community that surrounds women’s sports in particular is they care about a lot more than the sports, and the values transcend beyond the pitch. And that’s about diversity, inclusion, progress. And I think that’s just inherent because it is disruptive in itself to see women embodied, powerful, unapologetic and also very celebrated the way that you do in the professional sports world today. The people that it’s drawing in are the same people that want to march, and they want to create change and they want to stand up for what they believe in.<\/p>\n

It’s so embodied in the Angel City culture. The professional team that I play for has just nailed it. And when you’re in the stadium, it’s electric, and win or lose, it’s a different type of vibe than any other sports arena I’ve been in because there’s a connection point for all of the audience. They care about more than the X’s and O’s. They care about what we represent to them, the progress and the opportunity that we as women athletes represent.<\/p>\n

On the versatility of women athletes…
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\nIt’s always been that way in women’s sports, and it’s just becoming more popularized. I think the expectation is that we would always be multifaceted as women and expected to do multiple jobs in multiple roles, if we were going to have careers. And so it really did take to me and my personality to be a player and also be a leader off the field, on the US women\u2019s national team, going through the Equal Pay lawsuit, going through the reestablishment of our players association.<\/p>\n

For me, it was such a balancing sense of purpose that I continue to create space in my life for that, and I think that’s what we’ve done with our business, RE\u2014INC. RE\u2014INC is reimagined, incorporated. We set out, in 2019 when we started this company, to reimagine the status quo, to reimagine the way women are seen and experienced in sports. And it’s a very bold and ambitious goal, and we do it in a multifaceted way. And I’m really, really proud of that.<\/p>\n

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech<\/strong>, a Leaders Group<\/strong> company. As a Leaders Performance Institute<\/strong> member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech<\/strong>\u00a0content in the field of athletic performance.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n

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