What are the principles and basic methods of sports injury prevention?

The core underlying principles of sports injury prevention can be summarized into three categories: proactive prediction, hierarchical adaptation, and dynamic adjustment. All implementation methods are extended around the core of "avoiding unreasonable stress exceeding the body's tolerance threshold." The essence is to protect before injury occurs.

A while ago, I met a college student who had just entered the running circle. He signed up for a half marathon without any specific preparation because of his good physical fitness when he was in school. He was so painful that he quit the race just after running 16 kilometers. He was diagnosed with iliotibial band friction syndrome. It took him two months to slowly resume exercise. In fact, if he understood these preventive logics, he would not suffer this crime at all.

Active prediction may sound a bit mysterious, but it actually means to go through all the risk points that may lead to injury in advance. For example, if you have an old ankle injury, you must wear an ankle brace in advance when playing badminton. When you don't come up, you rush to the net and dive to save the ball. The details of the court equipment must not be missed. Last month, there was a guy in the gym who wore sneakers to play indoor court. The floor slipped and sprained his foot, making it swollen like a bun. This is a typical consequence of not doing risk prediction.

In addition to checking risks in advance, it is more important to recognize your current level and don't compare yourself with others. This is the core of hierarchical adaptation. In the gym, you can often see novices who have just practiced for two weeks and veterans who have been practicing for three or four years trying to deadlift with heavy weights. Their movements are deformed and they still grit their teeth, and many people end up with protruding waists. When Liu Genghong was doing firework a while ago, many people who usually sit for a long time jumped up and danced the whole way, regardless of whether they had collapsed arches or not, or whether their core strength was sufficient. In the end, many people ended up with knee pain and lumbar muscle strain. To put it bluntly, they didn't do the load. The movements should be adapted to your own athletic ability. The focus of adaptation is different for different sports. For running and jumping, you should give priority to the alignment of the lower limbs. For shooting, you should focus on the mobility of the rotator cuff and wrist. If you blindly copy other people's training plans, it will only happen sooner or later.

No matter how well you prepare in advance, there is no one-size-fits-all prevention plan. You have to make dynamic adjustments according to the actual situation. For example, if you stay up late and work overtime this week, sleeping only five or six hours a day, you originally planned to run 10 kilometers, but after running 3 kilometers, your legs feel heavy and you can't concentrate. If you continue to run at this time, the risk of muscle strain and sprained feet will at least triple. There is also a hot day in the summer of 35 to 6 degrees Celsius. If you sprint at the pace of spring and autumn, cramps and heatstroke will be mild. Not long ago, a friend of mine gained 6 pounds during the muscle-building period. He still ran with the same long strides as before. Within two weeks, he complained of knee pain. He just didn't realize that his weight had changed. The impact of landing was already different from before. If he continued to run according to his old habits, something must be wrong.

Oh, by the way, there is actually quite a bit of controversy about the way to warm up before exercise. In the early years, many old coaches required static stretching and leg pressing for more than ten minutes before exercise. However, in recent years, a large number of sports medicine studies have shown that static stretching for a long time before exercise will reduce muscle explosiveness, and on the contrary, it is easy to get injured in explosive sports such as basketball and badminton. It is more recommended to do dynamic activation before exercise, and then do static stretching to relax after exercise. However, many practitioners of long-distance endurance running believe that doing 1-2 minutes of mild static stretching before running can effectively reduce muscle viscosity and reduce the risk of cramps in the second half of the long distance. In fact, there is no absolute right or wrong, and it must be adjusted based on the type of event you participate in.

In fact, daily prevention does not need to be too complicated. It is enough to practice more small muscle groups around the joints. For example, if the quadriceps and hamstring muscles around the knees are strengthened, the patella will not easily shake when running, which can reduce more than half of the wear and tear caused by exercise. For activation before exercise, you don’t need to follow the ten-minute tutorials on the Internet. For example, if you want to run, just raise your legs for 30 seconds, kick your legs after 30 seconds, and then walk sideways for 20 meters. It is enough to open the joints and wake up the muscles. Also, don’t just focus on training, recovery is also the top priority of prevention. In the past, a friend in the running group ran 10 kilometers every day for three months without taking a break. Finally, he was diagnosed with a stress fracture and had to lie down for three months before he could get off the ground. If he had arranged for 1-2 days a week to actively recover, swim or take a walk to dissipate the accumulated fatigue, this kind of thing would never have happened.

To put it bluntly, sports injury prevention has never been a profound academic topic. It just means that you should pay more attention to your body's reaction and don't act blindly. It will be more effective than any expensive protective equipment.