The three stages of sports injury recovery are

The three stages of sports injury recovery are Acute inflammation phase, tissue repair phase, and functional reconstruction phase ——This is the classification method with the highest consensus in the sports medicine community. No matter whether you sprained your foot, pulled your hamstring, or injured your rotator cuff in a fall, you basically cannot escape this path.

Last week I just picked up a young man who was running a half-marathon. He stepped on a curb during the last kilometer and sprained his ankle. When he arrived at my clinic, his ankle was swollen like a freshly steamed sourdough bun. His skin was so bright that it was almost oozing water, and he was so painful that he didn't even dare to touch his feet. This is a typical acute inflammation stage. This stage is usually 1-7 days after the injury. It is essentially an "alarm" sent by the body to the injured area: the damaged capillaries are bleeding, and inflammatory factors gather to clean up the necrotic tissue, so it becomes red, swollen, hot, and painful. Oh, by the way, I have seen too many people take out safflower oil and rub it vigorously as soon as they are injured. This is simply adding insult to injury. Rubbing the already broken blood vessels will make them bleed more and become more swollen, but please do not do this. There has been quite a debate in the past two years about whether to apply ice at this stage: the traditional RICE principle requires immediate ice application to reduce swelling, but the newly proposed PEACE&LOVE concept in recent years believes that ice application will inhibit the normal release of inflammatory factors and slow down the repair progress. My own practical experience is that you don’t have to rely on theory. If you are so painful that you can’t even put on your shoes, apply ice for about 10 minutes (remember to wrap a towel and don’t put it directly on the skin) to relieve the pain. Don’t apply it for half an hour and frostbite the skin. The core purpose is one: don’t move blindly and give your body enough time to start repairing.

Once most of the pain has subsided, and it is no longer swollen or hot when pressed, it has basically entered the tissue repair period, which is usually about 1-6 weeks after the injury. At this stage, your body is secretly "repairing holes" for you: fibroblasts continue to secrete collagen fibers to connect damaged tendons and ligaments little by little. The newly grown tissues are as tender as bean sprouts and can be torn apart with a little force. There are also differences between different schools at this stage: the more conservative ones will ask you to brake and not move throughout the entire process, while the more radical ones will recommend that you do small movements within a pain-free range. In fact, both are reasonable. Not moving at all can easily lead to tissue stickiness, which will affect subsequent joint mobility. Moving too much can easily tear off new tissue and cause secondary injuries. I usually ask patients to do activities that are completely effortless: if they have a sprained foot, they can hook their feet and rotate their ankles; if they have pulled hamstrings, they can lie down and gently lift their legs. No need to exert force, as long as there is no pain when moving. If possible, they can do low-intensity ultrasound physical therapy, which can speed up their recovery. The pain at this stage is particularly confusing. Many people think that walking is no longer painful and they are anxious to go back to playing ball and running. I have seen too many cases where the second injury lasted for several months.

What many people don’t know is that when the swelling disappears and the pain disappears when walking daily, it is not a complete recovery at all. The easiest time to get stuck is during the functional reconstruction period. Just like your newly built cement road, it looks dry on the surface, but in fact the inside is not completely solidified. If you run a heavy truck directly on it, it will definitely crack. I used to have a badminton player who sprained his ankle and took three weeks off before playing. As a result, he sprained it four times in three months. It was later found out that the proprioceptor in the ankle was damaged during the injury. He always felt that his feet were soft and "cannot step firmly". This was the reason. There is no fixed time point for this stage. Minor injuries can be resolved in two or three weeks, while severe cruciate ligament rupture may require more than half a year of training. There is no unified standard for training ideas: some rehabilitation practitioners will focus on training peripheral muscle strength first, while others will first train balance and proprioception. I am used to doing it along the way, starting with basic movements such as standing on one foot and calf raises, and slowly transitioning to small steps and changes of direction. Only when you can fully keep up with the intensity of your previous exercise, without the awkward exertion, easy soreness, and always feeling that you "can't exert your strength", is it really good.

Although it is said to be three stages, in fact, there is no need to stick to the time point. Everyone's injury degree and body recovery ability are different. Just because someone can run 5k two weeks after injury does not mean that you can too. The physical feeling is always more accurate than the standard answer online. If you are really not sure, it is much more reliable to find a reliable sports rehabilitation therapist for evaluation than to guess blindly on Baidu.