Brief introduction to the principles and methods of sports injury prevention

The core principles of sports injury prevention can be summarized as three underlying logics: Adaptability priority, risk anticipation, and dynamic adjustment. The practical method is centered on the three dimensions of "pre-risk screening, exercise process control, and post-training recovery." However, there is no universal solution that applies to all people and all sports. Specific choices need to be flexibly adjusted based on personal foundation, sports type, and real-time status. Blindly following standardized strategies will increase the risk of injury.

I accompanied my friend to the rehabilitation department last week to have his waist checked. He had just applied for a fitness card for the third week. He followed the online deadlift instruction and started to lift 30kg. He casually shook his arms during the warm-up and could not stand up after the second set. He was particularly aggrieved: "Didn't I warm up according to the strategy? Why am I still injured?"

In fact, this is also a misunderstanding among most sports enthusiasts: they always think that it will be wrong to follow other people's successful experiences, completely ignoring that their own physical conditions are fundamentally different from others. In the early years, the sports medicine community generally promoted "universal warm-up standards", requiring 5 to 10 minutes of jogging + full-body static stretching before all exercises. In recent years, many specialized physical fitness coaches have refuted this statement - before you play badminton, you should focus on activating the rotator cuff and ankle joints, and before doing powerlifting, you should move the thoracic spine and activate the core. If you use a set warm-up process, the parts that should be activated will not be warmed up, which will waste time. A few years ago, there was a popular saying in the running circle that "you need to run more than 300 kilometers per month to be considered entry-level." Now many rehabilitation practitioners are openly criticizing this argument: People who weigh more than 80kg have a lot of pressure on their knee joints. Running 10 kilometers a day is purely to brush up the KPI for the thinness of your meniscus. It is not necessary at all.

Many people’s impressions of sports injuries are “sudden twisting” and “accidental fall.” In fact, 80% of sports injuries in clinical data are accumulated from chronic strain, and there are signals long before obvious pain appears. I used to take care of an amateur marathoner. Every time he finished running, he felt the outside of his calf was tight. He rubbed it for two days, put on a plaster, and then continued running. He even bought a famous compression leg sleeve to "prevent injury." In the end, the pain was so painful that he had to go up and downstairs to get checked. He already had moderate iliotibial band syndrome, and he stopped training for three months to recover before returning to the track. It was later found out that he had mild foot pronation, and he chose soft-soled running shoes that mainly focused on cushioning. His gait was wrong and the equipment was mismatched. The wear and tear had already begun, and the leg sleeves could not hold him at all.

The sports circle has been arguing for almost ten years about whether the training plan should be "follow the watch" or "follow the body feeling". Most professional teams support following the plan. After all, there are team doctors who monitor physiological indicators every day and have a high error tolerance rate; but for ordinary enthusiasts, there is really no need to stick to the plan. Yesterday I didn't go to bed until two o'clock. If you carry on the heavy strength training originally scheduled today, the probability of deformed movements will triple. It is better to walk slowly for half an hour. One week before a girl's menstrual period, her muscle strength and reaction speed will drop by about 15%. If she has to sprint a 10-kilometer PB, the risk of strain is much higher than usual. I have seen too many people insist on "training cannot be interrupted" and end up being injured for several months, which in turn delays even more progress.

In fact, at the practical level, preventing injuries does not require you to understand too much complicated anatomy knowledge. If you do a few small details, you can avoid 80% of pitfalls.

If you are new to sports, don't rush to buy equipment and sign up for classes. Spend ten minutes to do a basic posture assessment to see if there are any problems such as shoulder height, knee buckle, or arch collapse. Many sports apps now have free assessment functions. You can get the results by taking two steps in front of the camera and doing a squat. If there are obvious posture problems, it is better to adjust first and then exercise. I once had a colleague who danced with Liu Genghong for half a month, but her knees hurt so much that she couldn't walk. After going for a checkup, she found out that she had congenital chondromalacia of the patella, and she always buckled her knees in when jumping. If she had known that she had this problem in advance, and adjusted her movements slightly, and changed her jumping movements to a half-squat, she would not be injured at all.

Don't worry about "whether to wear protective gear" or "how long to warm up" during exercise. Wear protective gear in advance for support in areas with old injuries. Don't rely on protective gear to "buff" areas with no problems. On the contrary, it will cause the surrounding muscles to degenerate and become more and more fragile. When you warm up, focus on the parts you want to practice today. When playing badminton today, you can turn your shoulders more and do more ankle jumps. When practicing your glutes and legs today, do a few sets of clam poses to activate your buttocks. It is much more effective than running around for ten minutes.

Don’t just lie flat and check your phone after training. If your muscles are just sore, it’s delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). Walking twice slowly and rolling with a foam roller can relieve it. If you have tingling, numbness, snapping joints and pain, don’t believe the old-school fitness circle’s nonsense that “pain means growing muscles.” Stop training and rest as soon as possible. If it’s serious, go to the rehabilitation department directly, don’t bear it.

After all, the core of sports injury prevention is actually not to treat exercise as a task, and don't always think about copying other people's work. If someone else wears carbon shoes for running PB, if they hit your pronation foot, it may be the weapon that hurts your foot; if someone else squats a heavy weight, if it hits your weak core strength, it may be the root cause of your waist slipping. Listen more to the voice of your own body, which is more reliable than Internet celebrity strategies or the experience of experts.