Sports injury prevention and rehabilitation

Prevention always takes precedence over treatment. Rehabilitation is by no means a passive retreat but a staged scientific active intervention. There is no universal plan that applies to everyone. All intervention methods must match the individual's movement pattern, injury type and recovery stage.

Last week, I met a young man who has been playing field ball for three years at the gym I frequent. His right shoulder has been hurting for almost half a year. Every time he kills the ball, he has to rub it for ten minutes. He still feels that he has not exercised enough strength. It was not until last week that the pain made him unable to lift his arm for an MRI. It was discovered that the rotator cuff has been partially torn. The doctor said that if it takes another two months, he will have to undergo surgery. In fact, I have seen too many examples like him. When many people exercise, they only focus on results, weight, and pace, and never regard "not getting injured" as the primary prerequisite for exercise.

Regarding how to prevent injuries, there are actually two mainstream voices in the sports circle, and no one can convince the other: one insists that movement patterns are the core, and says that if you run incorrectly and in the wrong order of exerting force, and pile up running volume and weight, you are looking for trouble for yourself.； The other group believes that load management is fundamental, saying that the movements of many professional athletes do not meet textbook standards at all, but they can accurately control the intensity and frequency of exercise and still achieve results without getting injured. I have taught students myself for so many years, and I actually feel that these two things are not contradictory at all - no matter how standard your movements are, if your weekly mileage suddenly increases from 5 kilometers to 30 kilometers, your knees will still hurt. ； There are some minor flaws in your movements, but if the small muscle groups are strong enough and you keep two parts of your strength in every movement, there may not be any problems.

There was a student who was preparing for a first marathon before. He watched a short video and saw people saying that when running, the balls of the feet must be on the ground to avoid hurting the knees. He forced himself to change his posture, and running seemed like jumping on tiptoes. Within two weeks, he got Achilles tendonitis, which was so painful that he couldn't even go downstairs. Later, I didn't let him forcefully correct his posture. I first helped him practice the feeling of hip strength for half a month, and then controlled the increase in running volume to no more than 10% per week. Later, he ran the first marathon for 3 hours and 47 minutes, and there was nothing wrong with his knees and Achilles tendons. Oh, by the way, there are still many people who think that warming up is just standing on the sidelines, shaking your arms and kicking your legs, and it takes two minutes. That's not a warm-up, that's called moving the joints. If you really run up and jump hard, your muscles won't react, so it's weird if you don't strain it. If you really want to warm up properly, you have to activate the muscle groups you will use next: before playing badminton, do a few sets of light weight Lucky Cat and shoulder external rotation to wake up the rotator cuff. ； Before squatting, do a few sets of clam poses and glute bridges to activate the gluteal muscles, which is much more effective than stretching your muscles for ten minutes.

If you accidentally get injured, don't panic. The most taboo are the two extremes: either carry it and continue to build it, or just lie down and raise it until the end of the world. The old view of traditional orthopedics is that you have to immobilize when you are injured, and move if you can to give the tissue enough time to repair. ； Sports medicine now advocates that after the 72-hour acute phase (this phase follows the RICE principle: rest, cold compress, compression, and elevation are correct), you should do active activities within the pain-free range as soon as possible - to put it bluntly, don't wait for the muscles to atrophy before moving, as it will be more difficult to recover at that time.

There used to be a sophomore in high school who stepped on someone else's foot while playing basketball and sprained his ankle. X-rays showed no fractures. The doctor asked him to rest for three weeks. After a week of rest, he felt no pain, so he went to play ball secretly. As a result, he sprained his ankle three times in three months in a row, which became a habitual sprain. Later, he came to me for rehabilitation. He first practiced ankle mobility for three weeks, and then practiced balance and small strength for three weeks. Later, he went back to play in the league for a whole semester, and he never had any pain again. You see, it’s not that you can’t move if you’re injured, you have to move in the right place.

Many people think that recovery is enough to stop pain, but that is too naive. Pain-free is only the most basic first step. You have to see whether the strength of the injured side can return to more than 90% of the healthy side, whether the movement pattern has returned to the state before the injury, and even whether you dare to do the movement that was injured before during exercise - psychological fear is also a big cause of secondary injuries. Take anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction as an example. Many people can jog, go up and down stairs six months after the operation, and feel that they are fine. If they rush back to fight, the probability of secondary rupture can reach more than 30%. In the formal rehabilitation process, it takes at least 12 months to return to contact sports, and functional tests such as muscle strength, jumping, and direction change are also required. After that, you can gradually resume fighting.

To be honest, the purpose of exercise is to make the body more comfortable. There is no need to compete with yourself just to brush up data or score. Pay more attention to your body's signals when exercising. Stop as soon as you feel the stinging or pulling pain. Don't hold on. If you are really injured, don’t frighten yourself by searching Baidu. Either find a reliable sports medicine doctor or a certified rehabilitation practitioner, which is much more effective than blindly trying internet celebrity rehabilitation exercises. After all, we exercise to live a more enjoyable life, not to save ourselves from injuries, right?