Basic tips for sports injury prevention include

Basic skills for sports injury prevention include five core directions: adaptive warm-up, dynamic load adjustment, movement pattern calibration, targeted relaxation and recovery, and risk prediction. There are no fancy routines. The essence is to help you control the body load during exercise within a safe threshold.

Let’s first talk about the warm-up that is most easily perfunctory. General fitness people generally recommend dynamic warm-ups, such as high leg raises, side sliding steps, joint circles, light jumping jacks, etc., to activate the muscles and joints to be used one by one, slowly increase the heart rate, and avoid sudden force and muscle injury. But if you go to a powerlifting gym to squat for two days, you will find that many senior athletes do not do a separate warm-up session at all, but directly do sets with 30%, 50%, and 70% of the target weight in sequence, and complete activation while finding the feeling of movement. There is no absolute right or wrong between the two methods. The former is suitable for ordinary people who do not have much exercise experience and has a high error tolerance rate. The latter requires extremely high movement control ability. Novices who learn blindly can easily carry heavy weights with unactivated muscles and directly injure their waists. Last month, there was a young man in my running group who had just graduated. He was excited when he saw others running a half marathon. He followed the big group to run 15 kilometers on the weekend. He casually shook his arms during the warm-up. After running 3 kilometers, he strained his gastrocnemius muscle and was limped for almost two weeks. It was a lesson learned in blood and tears.

Don't think that everything will be fine if you warm up well. I have seen too many people who talk about "acting according to their ability" but get confused as soon as they get on the sports field. You must have heard of the default 10% rule for running laps: the increase in running volume each week should not exceed 10% of the previous week. However, some endurance project coaches advocate "controllable overload". Occasionally, the load can exceed 10%, as long as the subsequent recovery can keep up, it will increase endurance faster. Both statements are fine, but the core thing is that you have to figure out your own recovery ability - if you ran 5 kilometers the day before and your legs are still so sore that you can't lift it the next day, don't impose any KPI on mileage, it's really unnecessary. The kind of person who can deadlift twice his body weight with his head after two months of training in the gym, the kind of person who dares to sign up for a marathon as soon as he gets started in the road running circle, and eight out of ten will end up being frequent visitors to orthopedics. Oh, by the way, if you have an old injury, the speed of load progression will be at least half slower than that of ordinary people. Don’t compare it with people who are not injured. A badminton enthusiast I knew before went to play in an open competition when his ankle was just three weeks old, and he tore the ligament. He was off work for half a year and couldn’t even go to work.

Motion mode calibration seems to be a simple matter, and most people get into trouble. Many people learn movements from short videos and watch bloggers do squats and deadlifts easily. When they imitate them, they look similar, but in fact, the force chain is all wrong: squatting with knees buckled in, deadlifting with a rounded back, and running with too much heel strike (heel strike). They don’t feel it. After practicing for two months, they either have knee or back pain. There is also a controversial point here: many athletes in the bodybuilding circle will allow the knees to be buckled moderately during squats to stimulate the vastus medialis muscles and create better-looking legs. However, the rehabilitation circle generally believes that this action pattern will increase the pressure on the patellar tendon by more than 30%. Ordinary people's core and leg strength do not reach that level, and they will most likely injure their knees if they practice this method. If you are not sure whether your movements are correct, you can either find a reliable coach to take a look, or you can take two videos in front of the mirror and compare the standard movements to find the differences. It takes 10 minutes to do it, which is much more cost-effective than spending thousands of dollars to see a doctor if you are injured.

This area of targeted restoration has been a hot topic on the Internet in the past two years. In the past few years, everyone on the Internet has been saying that you must statically stretch for 15 minutes after exercise. In the past two years, new research has shown that static stretching for more than 30 seconds will reduce muscle power output and increase the risk of subsequent exercise. The two sides are arguing. In fact, there is nothing wrong with both conclusions: If you have just finished playing half a game and have to rest for 10 minutes before playing the second half, do not stretch statically for a long time. After stretching, your legs will be too soft to jump and it will easily sprain your feet; but if you have finished all exercise for the day and want to relax your tight muscles, moderate static stretching is absolutely fine, and there is no need to follow the black and white trend. I used to like to stretch the back of my thighs for 10 minutes after playing. Later, I learned from my friend who is a rehabilitation teacher on the national team. Now I switch to rolling a foam roller for 5 minutes to loosen the adhering fascia, and then do 3 sets of dynamic stretching. The soreness and swelling the next day are indeed much lighter. You can also try several methods to find the one that is most comfortable for you.

Finally, let me talk about a point that many people will ignore: risk pre-judgment. In fact, to put it bluntly, you need to scan your surroundings before exercising. Before playing, check whether there is water on the court or scattered badminton balls. When running, pay attention to the pebbles on the road and the cats and dogs that suddenly jump out. Don’t rush forward without raising your head while wearing noise-cancelling headphones. If you have an old injury, take precautions in advance: I sprained my ankle while playing in 2019 and tore part of the anterior talofibular ligament. Now every time I play, I do 3 sets of ankle joint strengthening and activation, and then use kinesio tape to fix it. When I play, if I feel my ankle shakes when I land, I immediately come off the court to rest. I have never injured the same position again in the past two years. Last week I saw a golfer whose knee had been hurting for three days. He was still playing the whole game with his head up. When he jumped up and landed, he heard a clicking sound. He went to the hospital to find out that the cruciate ligament was partially torn. He had to rest for at least three months. It was really not a mistake.

In fact, to put it bluntly, exercise is like driving a car. The warm-up is to warm up the car, the load is the accelerator, the action mode is the steering wheel, and recovery is maintenance. If you step on the accelerator hard before the car is warmed up, the steering wheel is still crooked, and you never do maintenance, sooner or later you will have an accident. There is no standard answer to injury prevention, and there is no need to adhere to any standard process. The core skill is to "listen to your own body." Don't compare weight, mileage, or exercise time with others. After all, you exercise for pleasure and good health, not to show off your friends and win medals. If you are injured and lying in bed, all those false reputations are of no use, right?