Basic Tips for Preventing Sports Injuries

The core logic of sports injury prevention has never been to buy the most expensive protective gear and follow the trend of Internet celebrity warm-up movements. It is the four underlying principles of "prioritizing action patterns over load, adapting exercise intensity to the current state, identifying risks earlier than formal training, and matching recovery methods with exercise consumption." If these four points are achieved, more than 90% of non-accidental sports injuries can be avoided.

To be honest, I have been involved in running circles, gyms, and amateur badminton teams for almost 8 years. I have seen too many people blame their injuries on skating and poor equipment. They turn around and dare to rush with twice their body weight as soon as they learn to squat. They grin their teeth in pain and shout "persistence is victory". To put it bluntly, this is not a problem with sports, but because you don't take your body seriously.

Take the action mode as an example. Last week, a young man in the gym stopped training due to shoulder impingement syndrome. He always shook his arms with all his strength when hitting the ball, and his waist and abdominal core were not used at all. I have persuaded him to change his actions several times, but he always said, "I am just playing, there is no need to be so professional." In fact, there are different voices in the industry on this point: Sports medicine statistics show that 72% of chronic strain injuries among amateur sports people come from wrong movements. However, many rehabilitation practitioners believe that if it is just a once-a-week leisure exercise, as long as you do not force the limit or do movements that are far beyond your ability, slightly substandard movements will not cause irreversible damage. Of course, if you want to play for a long time and do not want to suffer injuries, it is definitely a profitable business to find a reliable coach to learn the basic movements for two hours.

There is even more controversy about warm-ups. In the past few years, the entire Internet was scolding static stretching, saying that stretching before a competition will reduce muscle explosiveness and increase the risk of injury. Now many powerlifters have come out to share their experiences, saying that short-term static stretching within 30 seconds of weak parts before a competition can reduce muscle viscosity and avoid strains caused by heavy weights. In fact, there is no standard answer to this matter: If you are going to run 100 meters and hit the maximum weight, then dynamic warm-up (activities with displacement such as leg raises, side sliding steps, and joint circles) must be the first choice. ； If your flexibility is extremely poor and you can't even squat down, spending a minute stretching your hamstrings before the game will be better than squatting until your waist is too tight. If I really want to give a general suggestion, just warm up until your body is slightly sweaty and all the parts that are usually tight are loosened. You don’t have to follow other people’s procedures for 15 minutes.

One thing that many people tend to overlook is that the intensity of exercise must be adapted to your current state. A while ago, there was a girl next to me who was dancing Liu Genghong Cao and suffered a recurrence of patellar chondromalacia. She complained to me and said, "I was fine all the time dancing before." When I asked, I found out that she stayed up late the day before to catch up on the plan until three o'clock. She woke up in a daze the next day and started dancing with her. Halfway through the dance, her knees started to hurt and she still struggled to hold on. There have long been studies in the field of exercise physiology. When you sleep for less than 6 hours in a row, the muscle reaction speed will drop by more than 30%, and the joint stability will also be greatly reduced. At this time, let alone sprinting PB or heavy weight, even if you play at the usual intensity, you may be injured. I encountered this pitfall when I was preparing for a half-marathon. I couldn't sleep for five hours for three days in a row, and I had to run 15 kilometers for training. Halfway through the run, I stepped on a pebble and sprained my ankle. It took me almost a month to recover, but the gain outweighed the loss.

There is no need to follow the trend when it comes to protective gear. I have seen too many new runners who have just started running. They have not yet run 100 kilometers, and they have prepared a complete set of knee pads, compression socks, and patellar straps. In fact, the essence of protective gear is to "repair leaks" - either you have old injuries and need protective gear to provide additional support, or you are going to run at an intensity far beyond your daily intensity (such as running a full marathon or running a maximum weight) and need protective gear to reduce risks. If you don't have any injuries, wearing knee braces for a long time will make the muscles around the knee joint dependent, making them weaker and weaker, making you more susceptible to injury. Of course, this does not mean that protective gear is all about IQ tax. If you already have symptoms of discomfort in your knees, or go skiing or playing extreme sports, don’t skimp on the protective gear you should wear. If you actually fall, you will know that the money is worth it.

As for recovery after training, there is really no need to pursue fancy fascia guns or hyperbaric oxygen chambers. Most people only need to spend 10 minutes rolling the tense muscles with a foam roller after training, don’t stay up late that day, and ensure more than 7 hours of sleep, which is enough to cope with daily exercise consumption. I have seen many people in the gym before. During training, they press the weight harder than anyone else. After practicing with a backpack, they leave without even stretching. Over time, they either suffer from lumbar muscle strain or shoulder and neck tension. Why bother.

After all, exercise is for fun and good health. Don't always think about "how far you need to practice" or "who you need to surpass". Listen more to your body's signals: move more when you feel tight, stop when you feel pain, and rest for two days when you are tired. It will be more useful than reading a hundred sports tips or buying equipment worth ten thousand yuan. If you really have an old injury caused by hard training and it hurts on rainy days, then you will know what it means to lose more than you gain.