What does a sports injury prevention strategy include

To put it bluntly, the prevention of sports injuries can never be solved by simply wearing protective gear and stretching. It is a full chain of adaptation movements covering pre-exercise status check, dynamic adjustment during exercise, and post-exercise fatigue recovery. The core is to adapt to your own body foundation, rather than copying general tutorials on the Internet.

There was a young man in the amateur running group I led last week who had just graduated. He had never been used to long-distance running before, so he followed the veteran team members to run the 5-kilometer interval. After running three times, he complained of pain on the outside of his knee. He went to the rehabilitation department to be diagnosed with iliotibial band syndrome, and he had to tiptoe even when going downstairs. He just skipped the most basic pre-evaluation process - he had an old ankle sprain before, and the stability of the ankle joint is inherently poor. When running, he exerts force to compensate, and naturally it is easy to wear the iliotibial band. Nowadays, many enthusiasts think that it is too troublesome for ordinary people to do functional assessment for amateur sports. If they have time, it is better to run two more laps. However, we all know that if we spend 10 minutes to test how long we can stand on one foot and whether our knees buckle in when squatting, we can avoid 80% of chronic sports injuries. No matter how we calculate this, it is cost-effective.

Of course, no matter how thorough the preliminary assessment is, it will be useless if you don’t pay attention during exercise. I have met many badminton enthusiasts who are equipped with a complete set of wrist, elbow, and knee pads. When they hit the court, they rely on their arms to swing hard without using their waist, abdomen and legs to exert force. After playing for half a year, they still suffer from tennis elbow and acromion impingement, which is so painful that it is difficult to lift their arms and put on clothes. Protective gear is originally a line of defense when your movements occasionally deform. It is not a fabricated "injury-free gold medal" for you. There are also "weekend warriors" who usually sit in the office for a week and play four hours of golf on weekends. They are people with a high risk of acute Achilles tendon rupture and meniscus tear. To put it bluntly, it means that the body does not wake up and goes to high intensity, so it is strange not to get injured.

Many people think that everything will be fine after exercising, so they slump on the sofa and scroll through their phones, ignoring the recovery process. This also hides the risk of injury. A while ago, there was a girl who often came to our gym to practice glutes and legs. After every practice, she would just carry her bag and leave, never stretching or relaxing. Her quadriceps muscles were as tight as a hard stone. Not long after, she started complaining of pain in the front of her knees. She was found to have patellar tendinitis, which is caused by tight muscles pulling on the patella for a long time. Nowadays, there are many opinions about recovery. Some people say that you must do static stretching immediately after exercise. There is also the latest research that says that after high-intensity burst exercise, walk slowly for a few minutes to do dynamic recovery. Then stretching will have a better effect and will not easily strain stiff muscles. In fact, there is no need to worry about which one is absolutely right. Just do what suits you. It is better than no recovery at all.

In fact, these strategies are not mysterious at all. Just don’t compete with your body. You can distinguish the normal fatigue of muscle soreness after exercise from the early warning signs of tingling and numbness. Take a rest when you are tired, and don’t insist on exercising for a long time to make your face swollen and make you fat. They are more reliable than any fancy high-tech prevention methods.