Great Britain's Millie Costello reveals her top tips on overcoming injury

Great Britain artistic swimmer, Millie Costello, has revealed her top tips on overcoming injury.

Costello has been part of Britain’s senior artistic swimming squad since 2018 and is now in to her second year of training at the High Performance Centre in Bristol.

And after missing some recent action due to a hip injury, she’s identified four ways that has helped her get past the mental struggles of having to sit on the sidelines.

These are…

1. Focus on what you can do
2. Keeping close to the team
3. Sticking to a rehab programme
4. Having other things to focus on such as university work.

Below she explains why these four things have helped her throughout this period.

Making sure you still feel involved

“For me it’s been making sure I can do what I can.” She said.

“I know that lower body at the minute is something I can’t work on but I know that I need to remain focussed and stick to my rehab. So I make sure that I have a programme so there’s something that I can follow every day.

“I like to make sure that I’m still getting in the pool when I can and that I’m around the team as much as possible so I still feel involved and part of the team.

“And it gives you that feeling that even if you’re not physically in it that you’re mentally still a full time athlete.

“Having other things to focus on helps too. For me at the moment it’s doing things like keeping on top of my university work.

“And by doing that I know that when I’m ready to get back to competing that it’s one less thing to think about and I can turn my full attention on getting back to the pool.”

Costello is expected to return to action at Swim England’s Artistic Swimming National Junior and Senior Championships from April 22-23 as preparation continues ahead of a busy summer of international competition for the British squad.

They will be competing at the European Games from June 22–26, and then have a quick turnaround before July’s World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan.