What are the principles of sports injury prevention?

Sports injury prevention has never been a fixed guideline that is universally applicable. The core essence is to find a dynamic balance between the body's endurance threshold and exercise intensity. All practical methods are extended around this logic. The boundaries of adaptation for people with different foundations and different projects vary greatly.

For example, the topic "Should static stretching be done before exercise" that is currently making a lot of noise on the Internet is the best example. Opposing views are mostly coaches and athletes in explosive sports. They believe that static stretching for more than 5 minutes before a game will reduce the strength of instant muscle contraction, and will instead increase the risk of strain in sports such as sprinting and weightlifting.； Most of the supporters are practitioners of endurance and flexibility sports. They believe that proper static stretching before long-distance running and yoga can loosen muscle adhesions and reduce the probability of strain caused by long-term exertion. Both conclusions are supported by clinical data. There is no one who is right and who is wrong. It is just a matter of different adaptation scenarios.

A while ago, I treated a young man born in 1995 who was just starting to run. He saw a tutorial from an internet celebrity that said, "You must stretch your legs for 10 minutes before running, and run 10 kilometers at least 5 times a week to lose weight." His own muscle strength was weak, and he had to endure the pain and increase the amount of exercise. Within two weeks, he developed a patellar tendon. Yan, who came here on crutches, complained that he was still injured after following the standard procedure. I told him that the standard procedure was prepared for experienced runners who run more than 100 kilometers a month. If you, a person who is too lazy to climb stairs, just follow this procedure, it would be weird if you don't get injured.

Don't engage in a standardized warm-up process. For example, if you have an appointment with friends to play basketball on the weekend, you don't need to follow the online warm-up tutorial for 20 minutes. First, you can slowly shoot baskets for 10 minutes, then run back and forth slowly. You will feel that your knees and shoulders are moving, and the joints are like that. The feeling of stiffness is gone, which is equivalent to lubricating the gears. Now it is much safer to go on the field and rush for the ball. I have seen too many people do a sub-standard warm-up process. The rotator cuff is as tight as a steel bar. If you raise your hand to save a foul ball, you will directly strain it. It is useless to just follow a formality.

Many people have a misunderstanding, thinking that "there is no pain in exercise, pain is just growing muscles." I have been a team doctor for almost 10 years. What I tell my team members most often is that soreness can be tolerated. Stinging pain, stretching pain, and pain from deep joints are alarms, not signals. Last week, the provincial team sprinted A young team member felt a little pain in his hamstrings during training. He felt that he was young and could handle it, so he sprinted 60 meters and directly broke one-third of the muscle fibers. It was supposed to be fine after just 3 days of rest, but now he had to lie down for 3 months and even missed the championship in the second half of the year.

Some people think that wearing the most expensive protective gear and using the most professional equipment will prevent injuries. There is also a lot of debate on this. Some studies say that long-term reliance on protective gear such as knee pads and wrist pads will prevent the small muscle groups around the joints from being exercised, causing them to slowly degenerate and become more susceptible to injury. There are also clinical cases to prove it. Suitable protective gear can reduce the probability of recurrence of old injuries. In fact, protective gear is "a first aid, but not an emergency". If your old injury is not fully healed, you will have to play in the game. Wearing a knee pad to support it is no problem. If you don't wear it in daily training, you can force your muscles to stabilize the joints. This is the long-term prevention method.

If there are any unchanging principles, it's just that you don't get along with your own body, don't blindly follow other people's training plans, pay more attention to your body's signals when exercising, it's more effective than memorizing any number of theoretical articles.