What are the methods to prevent sports injuries?

The essence of all reliable prevention methods cannot escape the word "adaptation", which is to completely match your physical ability with the current exercise load. Don't rush into overestimation. This is the core of the core, and it is more effective than how much protective gear you wear or how much stretching you do.

Last year, there was a young man in the running group I led who had just graduated. He had run 3 kilometers at most before, and he followed the veteran team members to run the 10-kilometer interval. He thought that wearing a patella belt would prevent injuries. However, he developed patellar tendonitis after three runs. He took two months off before starting to run again. This is a typical example of not knowing the boundaries of his own abilities and treating the protective gear in his pocket as a panacea.

Speaking of this, I have to mention the current controversy about the use of protective gear. Some people think that as long as you exercise, you must have a complete set of knee pads, elbow pads, and wrist guards to be professional. Others say that wearing protective gear will make the muscles around the joints dependent, which will reduce stability and make you more susceptible to injury. In fact, both opinions are reasonable. It depends on the situation: if you have an old injury, have just recovered from an injury, or are going to hit the heavy weight limit or compete in high-intensity competitions, wearing protective gear is definitely a way to protect yourself from the disadvantages.； But if you just jog 3 kilometers and play healthy badminton every day, there is no need to wrap yourself up like a robot. Slowly strengthening the small muscles around the joints can actually reduce the risk of injury from the source.

Many people have misunderstandings about warm-up. They think it is nothing more than running two laps and stretching their legs. Last week, there was a young man in our gym who walked around the court casually before playing doubles. He stretched his arms twice before jumping on the court. After playing for 10 minutes, he strained his rotator cuff and could not lift his arms. In fact, warm-up is not just a formality at all. It has to adapt to the exercise mode you want to do that day: If you want to play badminton today, you have to do a few sets of shoulder external rotation activation and small step change exercises in advance.； If you are training your legs today, do two sets of squats with an empty bar to pre-stimulate them to wake up all the target muscle groups before adding weight. This is not a waste of time to warm up.

You should also listen to your body's signals during exercise. Don't believe in the poisonous chicken soup that "pain means you are growing muscles". Delayed onset muscle soreness is a soreness that only appears 24 hours after exercise. If you feel sharp pain and joint stiffness immediately after exercise, The popping sound is the body sounding the alarm. A guy I met at the gym before was so painful that his elbow socket was so painful when he was bench pressing that he pushed the weight to the limit. In the end, the biceps tendon tore. The surgery and recovery took less than half a year, and the gain outweighed the loss.

There are still many people who think that training is done and recovery is superfluous. There is now controversy on the Internet that static stretching after exercise will lose strength, so it is better not to do it. In fact, as long as you don’t hit a heavy weight immediately after stretching, spend 10 minutes stretching the tense muscles after training, and roll the tight myofascia with a foam roller, which can not only relieve the soreness the next day, but also reduce chronic strain caused by long-term tension. There is really no need to worry about the temporary decrease in strength. It is better than stopping training for several months after injury.

In fact, if you really talk about it, those veterans who have rarely been injured in sports all year round really don't have any exclusive secret formula. They just know their own body boundaries, don't blindly follow other people's training volume, and don't forcefully carry the discomfort to show off. It's just like you drive a small-displacement car and have to accelerate with a sports car. Isn't it strange that it is not bad?