Athlete in Rehab | Kayaker | Student
AJ Davis is a 17-year-old state-level kayaker and training partner with the South Australian Sports Institute (SASI). She created Recover Hard Recover Smart after rupturing her ACL during a netball game on 19 November 2024.
Before the injury, sport was everything to AJ. She trained on the water six mornings a week, hit the gym three afternoons a week, and completed extra sessions on top of that. Kayaking wasn’t just what she did. It was who she was. When she was angry, she ran. When she was stressed, she trained. That was her outlet, her identity, her entire social world.
Then it was gone.
The first few months of ACL recovery were the hardest thing AJ had faced. The physical rehab was brutal. But the mental side caught her off guard. Some days she’d lie there thinking she’d never get back to where she was. Watching her teammates train without her added another layer of difficulty she wasn’t prepared for.
AJ searched for something that would help her understand what she was going through. She found medical information about rehab protocols. She found inspirational stories from elite athletes whose lives looked nothing like hers. But she couldn’t find what she actually needed: honest conversations from people in the trenches, dealing with the physical pain, the mental struggle, the isolation, and the fear that this might be it.
So she created it.
Recover Hard Recover Smart brings together athletes, coaches, psychologists, medical professionals, and other high-performance individuals to talk honestly about injury recovery. Not just the physical rehab, but the mental and social sides that nobody really prepares you for.
The podcast started as AJ’s Year 11 AIF (Activating Identities and Futures) project. She knew exactly what was missing in the world: honest, peer-level conversations about injury recovery for young athletes.
AJ is currently over nine months into her rehab. She’s back competing in kayaking at national level. She still can’t run for more than five minutes. Some days are hard. But she’s getting there.
More importantly, she’s discovered who she is outside of sport. She’s reconnected with art, something she loved before sport took over everything. She’s put more focus into her relationships with friends and family. She’s learnt to process emotions without relying solely on physical training.
She’s still the person who won’t leave a one-on-one basketball game until she’s won. That competitive fire didn’t go anywhere. But now she has more tools in her kit.
Recovery isn’t just physical. And you don’t have to figure it out alone.
