What are the methods to prevent sports injuries

Judging from the practical experience accumulated over many years by professional team doctors and amateur sports circles, the prevention of sports injuries is essentially to control risks in every link of the entire exercise cycle. The core covers risk investigation before exercise, load control during exercise, and repair and adjustment after exercise. There is no magic method, it is all about the details.

I once met a sophomore who had played basketball for three years. He always sprained his ankle. When it was severe, he couldn't play for two or three months. Later I found out that he had mild foot pronation, but he never took it seriously. The basketball shoes he chose were Internet celebrity models with a high center of gravity. Every time he jumped around before playing to warm up, the muscles around the ankle were not activated at all, which was equivalent to a self-made "falling buff". Later, he was given more supportive low-top shoes, and each warm-up included 10 minutes of standing on one foot and ankle-joint activation training. The frequency of sprained feet dropped by 80%. Speaking of pre-match preparations, there is another controversial point that has been quarreling for many years: some people think that you must do enough static stretching before the game to stretch the ligaments without injury. There are also many studies by exercise physiologists showing that static stretching for more than 30 seconds before the game will significantly reduce muscle explosiveness, but will improve sprinting and jumping events. The risk of target injury, in fact, there is no need to be obsessed with this point. It depends on what kind of event you are practicing - if you are practicing yoga or gymnastics, which requires high flexibility, you can do some stretching before the game.

It is not enough to prepare well before the game. When it comes to the sports field, failure to grasp the balance is the culprit of most people's injuries. I met a young man in the gym before. He could usually deadlift up to 140 kilograms. I made a bet with a friend that he could deadlift 180 kilograms. As soon as he pulled the bar to his waist, he heard a muffled sound. He had a lumbar disc herniation and he lay down for more than two months. There are also many novice horse runners who usually run up to 10 kilometers. If they suddenly push the limit to 25 kilometers before the race, they are likely to suffer from patellar tendinitis or fatigue periostitis of the tibia and fibula. This is not an alarmist. There is a popular saying now that as long as the movements are standard, you will never get injured. In fact, this is not necessarily true. Even if the movements are completely standardized, problems will still occur if the repetitions are too many and the muscles are involuntarily deformed after fatigue. Therefore, stopping in time before reaching exhaustion is sometimes more practical than clinging to the standard movements.

Many people think that after exercising, they just wipe off the sweat and drink a bottle of sports drink and that's it. However, if they don't do a good job of recovery, the prevention efforts they have done before will be in vain. Last week, a girl who ran a half-marathon came to me and said that her calves had been hurting for almost two weeks after finishing the run, and she felt stiff when walking. When I asked, I found out that she took the subway home directly after crossing the finish line, without even stretching for 5 minutes. Her muscles continued to be tight like a fully stretched bowstring, and it hurt when she exerted even the slightest amount of force. Nowadays, many people are superstitious about recovery supplements. They think that eating a cup of protein powder and soaking in a hot spring after training is called recovery. In fact, the most important thing is sleep and targeted relaxation. Repair of muscle micro-damage is mostly completed during deep sleep. If you stay up late every day to check your phone until one or two o'clock, it will be useless to take more imported supplements. If you are afraid of lactic acid accumulation, use a foam roller for 10 minutes after training, which is more effective than any Internet celebrity recovery tool.

After all, sports injury prevention has never been a complicated academic topic. Just don’t compete with your body. First, find out where your limits are and do the small details in every link. It is more useful than listening to many crash tutorials from Internet celebrity coaches.