Rick Reilly Quotes

I've dealt with a lot of injuries over the years, and you just learn about pain management and how to keep yourself in the best shape to play on Sunday, and then playing with pain.

It's football. Guys get hurt all the time.

I had to have help getting up these stairs because I've been tackled by so many lions and tigers. Really. I'm like an old football player.

I had a hard time at Chelsea mainly because I was injured much of the time. Every time I recovered from one injury I seemed to get a new one and it set me back again.

As a football player, you just deal with injuries. It's all part of the football game. I've dealt with injuries as much as everybody else. People have dealt with worse injuries than I've dealt with. It's all part of the game, all part of getting that tackle.

Am I ever going to be able to play football again? What's going on with my career? I was just thinking things like that. You've got tears going down your eyes. You've got your trainers right there and my parents right there. I was just thinking, "Is this it?" I didn't know what a knee injury was. I'd never felt pain like that.

It is terrible to be injured; you want to return to playing football.

I never had any major surgeries or anything like that. I've had a few career-threatening injuries, but I bounced back from them.

I hurt my left knee playing left tackle. I had surgery on my right knee.

I've had so many injuries.

My own basketball background was ripping up my ACL in a lawyer's league.

The worst injury I have ever suffered in the ring was a torn triceps; they had to take a piece of my hamstring to repair the tear. It was brutal; I was out for 6 months.

As a former football player who has carried a football more than 4,000 times, trust me, I did not go into ballroom dancing with my body being 100 percent, with no aches or pains or ailments coming with me. When you're dancing, you're doing stuff that your body's not used to, and so you start to aggravate those old injuries.

I got injured when I was a kid, and it prevented me from becoming a footballer.

Up until the age of 16, I was very focused on sport - I played a lot of football. Then I tore my ACL and had to stop playing.

Even when I was young, playing college football, and I injured my knee, I bounced right back.

There have not been many occasions when I have bowled pain free and generally you are not 100 percent.

But I do hope that medicine continues to improve and, in 10 years maybe, they'll be able to fix my body better than they did for the poor guys who are crippled up from playing in the NFL in the '60s and the '70s.

Coping with injuries is always difficult for athletes because all we want to do is, basically, to have our best performances unhindered.

I didn't pick up a ball for three years. It was very depressing for me because, as a professional, it's very difficult when you can't use the facilities, play cricket; you can't even touch the ball, so what are you going to do then?

It's been frustrating for me, as I've been injured a lot, but hopefully, I can get more fitness and get time on the pitch.

I've played with sprained ankles before, bruises, stuff like that.

My body is not the same anymore for training. It's too much pain. I did more than 14 surgeries. I left everything in the Octagon.

Any athlete will tell you that it's the most difficult thing in the world being injured.

Most of the players can get injured, small ones and big ones. But when you get the small ones, you have to fight against them and play, play, play.