Sports injury recovery training

It is by no means “the icing on the cake that starts only after the injury”, but can be intervened 48 hours after the acute phase of the injury (people following the surgery follow the doctor’s advice). Without aggravating the injury, it is a systematic intervention with the goal of reducing swelling and pain, restoring joint mobility, rebuilding muscle strength and proprioception, and returning to normal movement ability. The sooner scientific intervention is provided, the lower the probability of sequelae and repeated injuries.。

I just met a sophomore basketball student last week. It was just two weeks after the reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. When he came on crutches, his knee was as hard as a welded iron plate. When he bent it to 30 degrees, he was so painful that he broke into a cold sweat. He said that the orthopedic surgeon asked him to have his legs immobilized for a month before moving. We performed joint mobilization on him for half an hour, and taught him non-weight-bearing movements such as wall sliding on the bed and ankle pumps. When we checked again a week later, we found that his knees could already bend to 90 degrees, and the degree of quadriceps atrophy was more than half lighter than that of patients who only rested at the same stage.

In fact, until now, there have been divergent views in different fields regarding the timing of intervention of restorative training. Orthopedic clinical practice prefers "conservative rest". After all, the dislocated tissues and unhealed wounds cannot withstand the trauma just after the injury or surgery. Random movement can easily cause secondary bleeding and failure of fixation. The old saying "it takes a hundred days to break the muscles and bones" is not unreasonable. I have seen a patient with a wrist fracture before. He took off the plaster to practice grip strength just three days after the operation. In the end, the steel plate shifted and had to be operated on a second time. In the sports rehabilitation circle, "early mobilization" is more recommended, and the reason is very practical: joints will start to show adhesion after being fixed for more than a week, and it will take at least three times as long to recover from the muscle atrophy in a week. After recovering from the injury, many people feel that they "cannot exert strength" and "weak at every turn". It is not that the injury has not healed at all, but that the function has been lost after lying down for too long.

If we really want to break it down, both sides are right, but the applicable time window is different. Take the POLICE principle, which has been updated internationally for almost ten years. The "Absolute Rest (Rest)" in the old version of the RICE principle has long been replaced by "Optimal Loading (Optimal Loading)" - within 72 hours of the acute phase, ice should be applied and elevated, and don't dawdle. ； Once the swelling is almost gone and the pain drops below 3 out of 10 (probably a dull but completely tolerable level), you have to think about moving.

Two years ago, I stepped on a teammate's foot while playing badminton doubles while saving the ball. I suffered a grade three medial ankle sprain. It was swollen like a freshly steamed bun. I immediately went to the team doctor for compression fixation. I didn't dare to touch the ground for two days. After the swelling subsided on the third day, I started to sit on a stool and practice holding a towel with my toes. A week later, I started practicing standing on one leg while holding on to the table. Within three weeks, I went back to play amateur games. It has been almost three years since I sprained the same foot. I didn't understand this when I first sprained my foot. I listened to my family and lay there for a whole month. Later, when I walked, I always felt that my foot was soft and weak. I sprained my foot three times in a row in half a year, and it took me more than half a year to recover.

Many people misunderstand recovery training as "strength training". They squat their legs and raise their heels as soon as they start. In fact, this is not the case at all. For example, when recovering from an ankle injury, the first thing you need to practice is not strength at all, but proprioception - to put it bluntly, your feet know where they are and won't become crooked while walking. You can stand steady on one foot for 30 seconds with your eyes open, and then practice with your eyes closed. After that, it's not too late to practice heel raises. There are also runners with patellar tendonitis who always feel that they cannot bend because of knee pain. In fact, shallow squats within the pain-free range can stimulate the collagen production of the tendon, which makes the recovery faster. Instead, they keep walking with their legs straight. The patellar tendon is not stressed for a long time, and recovery is extremely slow. Of course, I have to mention that if you feel gasping in pain when squatting at 45 degrees, don’t hold on. Everyone’s injury location and degree are different, and other people’s movements may be the trigger for your injury.

Don’t believe those tutorials on the Internet that “quickly recover a sprained foot in one week” or “heal meniscus damage in three months”, they are really harmful. I have seen a young man with a first-degree meniscus injury return to run a full marathon after a month of training. I have also seen a girl with a third-degree meniscus tear. It took half a year to have surgery and a year of post-operative recovery before she dared to jog. The degree of injury varies greatly from person to person. If you are really unsure, go get an MRI first and find a reliable rehabilitation practitioner for an evaluation. It is 10,000 times better than practicing blindly in front of online videos.

Having said that, recovery training actually doesn’t have that many fancy things. The core is that you have to talk to your body. Stop when it hurts, and slowly increase the amount when you feel comfortable. Don’t lie flat until your muscles are soft and dare not move, and don’t rush back to the court to carry the pain. After all, we have been struggling for so long just to be able to run and play happily, right?