The world stopped turning for a second this summer when the Texans and their fans learned of Arian Foster’s groin injury. Houston was poised to be one of the dominant teams in the AFC this season, but the Foster injury completely took the wind out of their sails.
The Texans are still a team that can make a strong playoff push this season, but the fans and team aren’t the only ones who had the wind taken out of their sails for a little. For Arian Foster, this injury was one that got to him physically and emotionally.
Foster is no stranger to injuries in his career, but he knew that this one was going to take a lot of work to get fully back, despite miraculously staying in shape.
“I didn’t really lose the shape and I had a tube coming out of my stomach so I couldn’t do anything for like a week, week-and-a-half, two weeks,” Foster said. “It was just, your muscles tend to kind of atrophy and like I said, you have muscle memory. If you want to get back to where you were, you can and pretty rapidly if you work hard on it. The mindset is the mindset. I set my mindset for this, what I’m doing, since I was seven years old and it won’t change until I hang my cleats up. It’s going to be like that until they kick me out of here or they kick me out of the league. I love what I do and I’m going to continue to do it.”
There have been a number of injuries that Foster has had to recover from in his career thus far, but the part that was most difficult and that he is most proud of is his growth as a person through it all.
“I think at first it’s frustrating,” Foster said. “It gets frustrating because the evil thoughts start creeping in. You start thinking, ‘I know guys don’t work as hard as me. Why do I have to deal with this?’ Then you start feeling sorry for yourself. For me, that kind of goes away after the first couple hours. First couple hours, I get very angry. That’s growth, that used to stay with me for a long time. But now, as I’m growing, it kind of goes away. Then the thoughts start, for me it’s all about perspective. Look what I’m doing, look where I’m at, look what I’ve done in my life and look at other situations around the world. I hate to make it that deep but that’s how I rationalize it in my head. It’s really not that bad. It’s an injury but you’re still doing what you love to do and it’s about the journey. It’s fun to be an accomplished athlete. It’s fun to be all of this and all of that. You have all the money you want, everything that you want. But at the end of the day, what got me here was the fun part. What’s going to get me to where I’m going to go when I’m 40 years old is the fun part. So, enjoying every single day and having that presence of mind, that’s what you hang your head on is being present.”
It’s taken a lot for Arian Foster to get to where he is now mentally, especially after the year he’s had. In addition to trying to come back from yet another injury, Foster has had legal issues to deal with, and officially came out as an atheist after being raised Muslim his entire life.
With all that he had to confront physically and mentally, he knew that in order to grow as a man and be the person he wanted to be, he needed to seek help from an outside source.
“You get to a point where you just break down emotionally,” Foster said. “You take on a lot, when you’re in a position like a lot of my colleagues in the NFL, when you’re the breadwinner in your family and you’re the man of the house and you’re this and you’re a father and you’re this and your best friend and everyone’s just looking at you for everything. That’s a lot of pressure on a kid really in his 20s. At the end of the day, that’s what we are. You’re in the prime of your life physically, but you’re in the adolescence of your life mentally. It’s hard for people to grasp that concept. Once you’re honest with yourself about that, you can begin that growth process and that’s what I did.”
It’s been a long road for Foster, but he now says that he’s quickly getting back to full physical health, and that he is the happiest he’s ever been.
“I’ve grown so much, man,” Foster said. “It’s been a fun ride. Just looking back to who I was when I first walked into the NFL to who I am now, it’s been such a growth process. You learn a lot about yourself. It’s like I said, one thing I learned about myself is I might not be the most perfect person walking the planet Earth but I know everything that I do I try to do with a genuine intent. I fall short of a lot of expectations and that’s just part of life. I’m still young, still in my 20s. But as of right now, man, I’ve been through some of the most tough times personally this last year, but emotionally I’m probably the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. That’s through also work. I thought I was too cool to get counseling. I thought I was above that. A lot of guys feel like that, too. The only reason I’m talking about it now is I know a lot of people out there feel like I used to feel. If you maintain a certain status, you’re above certain things, like getting help, like emotionally. It’s a part of all of our growth. Once I started working on myself and self-reflection and digging into things in my past that were causing me to do things that were self-destructive, I learned why I was doing some of the things I was doing. Once you be honest with yourself and open up to people that you love, it’s a freedom that you can’t buy. That’s where I’m at right now.”
