What are the principles of sports injury prevention?

In fact, the core logic of sports injury prevention has never been to pursue completely zero injuries, but to control risks within the threshold that the body can bear and repair. All practical consensuses are extended around this core.

A while ago, there was a young man who was just starting out in a running group that I often went to. After training for less than three weeks, he signed up for a half marathon. When he ran 15 kilometers, his ankles were already stinging. He gritted his teeth and felt that he had "broken through the comfort zone." In the end, he was taken to the hospital before reaching the finish line. He was diagnosed with an avulsion fracture and had to lie down for two months before he dared to get off the ground slowly. To put it bluntly, you don’t take your body’s warning signals seriously. Soreness, stiffness, and uneven power are all your body’s call to stop. There is really no need to force yourself. Many people say that “training with injuries will increase your ability.” This is the case for professional athletes who have team doctors to evaluate them. Ordinary people will only accumulate old injuries.

Many people also think that buying all the protective gear and wearing professional shoes is equivalent to insurance, but this is not the case. I met a young man at the gym last week. He wore two layers of thickened knee pads and squatted 120 kilograms hard. When squatting, his knees were almost pressed in. The next day, he used crutches to pick up things. He was told that he had a second-degree meniscus injury. Protective gear is essentially an auxiliary tool that can disperse part of the pressure, but it cannot change the shearing force caused by wrong movements on the joints. Practicing the correct movement pattern will always be more useful than wearing protective gear with stacked buffs.

Speaking of which, I just want to mention a topic that has been quite controversial recently: should I do static stretching before exercise? One school of thought says that static stretching will temporarily reduce the explosive power of muscles and make it easier to strain. The other school of thought says that long-term persistence can improve flexibility and reduce chronic wear and tear. In fact, both conclusions are supported by experimental data. There is no absolute right or wrong at all - if you are planning to hit a strength PB or run an interval speed class that day, do not do long-term static pulls during warm-up. Do dynamic activations such as high leg raises and back kicks first. ； But if you only do low-intensity exercises such as daily jogging and aerobics, or you have poor flexibility and limited joint mobility, adding three to five minutes of static stretching to your warm-up can actually reduce the risk of stretching. There is no need to adhere to a certain school of thought. The most important thing is to adapt to your own sports scenarios.

Another common problem that many people make is being eager for success, especially during the period after Yangkang. I have met several people who could easily run 5 kilometers before, but after two months of rest, they sprinted 3 kilometers. As a result, they either suffered from soreness that made them unable to straighten their backs, or the Achilles tendon became inflamed and painful for a week, and even more extreme cases caused myocarditis. In fact, the sports medicine community has always had a consensus on safety thresholds. It is best not to increase the weekly exercise intensity and duration by more than 10%. If you think of your body as a family car that you drive all year round, you have to warm up the car and drive it slowly for a while after it has been parked for two months. If you step on the accelerator, it will definitely break down.

In fact, in the final analysis, there is no universal prevention principle. After practicing for a long time, you will find that it is more effective to understand the temperament of your body than to memorize many rules and regulations. When to rush and when to rest, your own body will always be more reliable than online tutorials.