What are the principles of sports injury prevention?

The core logic of sports injury prevention is actually to use active intervention to control the body load during exercise within the current tolerance threshold, and at the same time make up for the body's weaknesses in a targeted manner to reduce the probability of injury from the root cause.

There are many newcomers around me who have just started running on the road. They followed the old team members and rushed for 10 kilometers. They gritted their teeth and held on during the run. Within two days, they developed tibial pain. In severe cases, they even suffered from fatigue fractures. The essence is that they did not understand their current tolerance and rushed to increase the amount and stepped on the pit.

It’s interesting to say that many people’s understanding of injury prevention is limited to the phrase “stretch before exercise.” However, there is still a lot of controversy in the industry about stretching. The traditional sports training system believes that static stretching before exercise can lengthen muscle fibers, increase joint mobility, and reduce the risk of strain. However, a large number of follow-up studies in recent years have shown that doing a single set of static stretching for more than 30 seconds before exercise will significantly reduce muscle explosiveness, and will instead increase the probability of injury in sports that require explosive output, such as basketball and sprinting. It is more recommended to put static stretching in the relaxation period after exercise, and warm up before games to focus on dynamic activation. Of course, there are different opinions. For example, in sports such as powerlifting and yoga that require a large range of joint mobility, many senior coaches will still recommend doing static stretching before competition to open up the range of motion. You still have to follow your own project when choosing the specific answer. There is no need to stick to the standard answers on the Internet.

When I was coaching the high school track and field team, there was a kid who was practicing long jump who always felt that warming up was a waste of time. He would just jump on the runway after a few jumps, and he strained his gastrocnemius three times within two months. It took him almost a semester to fully recover. Later, I watched him do 5 minutes of high leg raises, back kicks, and hip circles before each training, and then 1 minute of foot and ankle stability training by standing on one foot alone. After that, he had no more muscle strain problems for more than half a year.

In fact, the human body is just like a second-hand bicycle that you often ride. If the chain is rusty or the brake is loose, you have to adjust it in advance. You can't wait until it falls and then repair it. Many people suffer from tight hip flexors, core weakness, and poor ankle stability caused by sitting for long periods of time. They don’t usually feel pain, itching, or feeling, but they become the trigger of injury when they exercise. These problems cannot be solved by just warming up. You have to spend more than ten minutes doing functional training to slowly make up for your shortcomings.

At the end of the day, there are no hard and fast rules for preventing injuries. Pay more attention to your body's feedback. Stop in time if you feel a tingling sensation during exercise or if your strength is wrong. Don't force yourself to achieve results. This is more reliable than any general tutorial.