Sports Injury Prevention Strategies

There is no universal formula that can 100% avoid sports injuries. The optimal prevention logic currently generally recognized by the sports medicine community and professional coaching groups is a system that combines "personalized and adapted exercise programs + dynamic risk monitoring + early scientific intervention after injury." Warming up, wearing protective gear, or copying the training plans of Internet celebrities alone are extremely risky and lazy practices.

Believe it or not, I met a 27-year-old young man in a city running group last year. He usually sits in the office and rarely does any exercise. He got excited after watching a video of a blogger clocking in for a half marathon. He copied the "three-week race preparation plan" shared by him. Before each run, he followed the video and did 5 minutes of stretching. The running shoes were purchased online. The red cushioning model was so painful that I couldn't walk in the third week of training. I went to the rehabilitation department to check for iliotibial band syndrome. Later I found out that he was born with varus feet. He should have chosen supportive running shoes, and he was too heavy. He shouldn't have run more than 3 kilometers in the beginning. How could he compare directly with bloggers who run all year round?

Speaking of warm-up, the debate in the sports circle has not stopped in the past two years. One group is the static stretching group that has been adhering to it for decades. It believes that stretching each joint ligament for 10 minutes before exercise can improve flexibility and avoid strains. ； The other school is the dynamic activation school that has become popular in recent years. It is said that static stretching will temporarily reduce the explosive power of muscles, but will increase the probability of injury in explosive sports by more than 30%. In fact, both sides are correct. It depends on what kind of exercise you do: if you practice yoga or rhythmic gymnastics, which require extremely high flexibility, it is absolutely fine to do static stretching before the game. ； But for sports that require instant bursts, such as running 100 meters or playing amateur basketball, it is a safer choice to spend 10 minutes before the game doing dynamic activation such as high leg raises, side sliding steps, and lunge turns. When I played in the city's amateur basketball league, the team's rehabilitator specifically prohibited us from doing leg presses for half a day before a game. He said that there was a player who used to press his legs for 20 minutes before each game and his legs became weak after two quarters. After changing the dynamic activation plan, the number of sprains and muscle strains in the team throughout the season was reduced by half.

In addition to the controversy over warm-up, the use of protective gear has also been a controversial topic in the fitness circle for many years. There is a group of people who believe that protective gear can provide extra support to joints and reduce force compensation, which is an urgent need to prevent injuries. ； Another school of thought says that long-term reliance on protective gear will cause the muscles around the joints to atrophy with disuse, which will increase the risk of long-term injuries. This is still a scoring scenario: Wear a waist brace when you deadlift and squat with heavy weights, and wear an ankle brace when playing contact sports. The advantages definitely outweigh the disadvantages. ； But if you wear knee pads and waist pads every day while walking or doing low-intensity aerobics, it is completely unnecessary. I had a former student who wore knee pads every day when his knees were a little cold and sore. After wearing them for two months, the strength of his quadriceps muscles was measured and he found that they were 30% weaker than before. Later, he slowly took off the pads and practiced silent squats and straight leg raises. It took more than a month of practice to recover.

Many people think that I can use the training plans that others can use. In fact, this is the biggest pitfall. Nowadays, the exercise physiology community has been promoting the concept of "individual exercise load threshold". To put it bluntly, everyone's muscle mass, joint flexibility, old injuries, and basic exercise abilities are different. There is no unified standard for suitable exercise intensity, frequency, and action patterns. For example, people who weigh more than 90 kilograms are not suitable for sports that have a strong impact on the knee joints such as running and skipping. It will be much safer to switch to elliptical machines and swimming. ； If you have an old ankle sprain before, no matter what exercise you do, you must first spend a week or two practicing ankle stability, otherwise the probability of the old injury recurring can be as high as over 60%.

Don’t think that everything will be fine if you warm up well, choose the right protective gear, and find a personalized plan. Body signals during exercise are the most accurate early warning. Muscle soreness and swelling are normal, but if there is tingling, joint snapping and pain, or a sudden inability to exert force when exerting force, don't force it, stop and adjust immediately. I sprained my foot when I was playing a game before. I thought I could still walk so I played half the game. Later, it was found that the lateral collateral ligament was partially torn. It took more than three months to recover. If I had stopped immediately to apply ice and apply compression, I would have been able to return to the court in two weeks at most. I regret it now when I think about it.

To be honest, sports injury prevention has never been a complex and sophisticated knowledge. To put it bluntly, don’t compete with your own body, and don’t blindly follow other people’s experiences. Listen more to your own body’s feedback, which is better than any omnipotent strategy spread online. If you are really unsure about your condition, it is better to spend several hundred yuan to find a reliable rehabilitation practitioner to do a full-body exercise ability assessment than to spend tens of thousands for surgery and lie down for several months if you are injured later. It is a good deal no matter how you calculate it.