What are the measures to prevent sports injuries?

In fact, the core of preventing sports injuries is to avoid the four major pitfalls of "lack of preparation, deformed movements, excessive load, and insufficient recovery." When it comes down to practical details that ordinary people can easily implement, there is no too mysterious threshold.

After all, the root cause of many injuries is not the exercise itself, but the result of not exercising at all, and then suddenly exercising violently. Last week, I had a sedentary colleague. Seeing the excitement of people running marathons around him, he directly signed up for a 5-kilometer fun run, rushed out without warming up, and sprained his foot just after running 2 kilometers. The ligament was torn and he was put in a cast, and he couldn't even go to work. The argument that "dynamic warm-ups are useful, while static warm-ups are harmful" that is currently very loud on the Internet is actually not that absolute. The academic community has not come up with a completely one-sided conclusion. Before I practice strength, I usually do 10 minutes of dynamic activation such as high leg raises, side sliding steps, and shoulder joint circles. Before practicing Yin yoga, I will do 3 minutes of static stretching of the shoulders, neck, and hips. Just adapt to your own sports. There is no need to follow the diode point of view.

As for the exercise process, the most important thing is not to compete with the body. When I was practicing bench press two years ago, I already had a sharp and fixed pain in my left shoulder. I also added 5kg of weight because my brain was hot. As a result, my rotator cuff was slightly damaged. I had to maintain it for more than three months without drinking mineral water. I didn’t even dare to mention the bottle, but later I realized that the dull feeling of muscle soreness is normal, but as long as there is a sharp, fixed pain, or joint jamming, it is the body shouting to stop, which is not a sign of "breaking through the bottleneck" at all, and you will only suffer losses if you carry on hard. There is also no need to pursue top-notch equipment, but it must be adapted to the project. I went to the gym last week and saw a young man playing badminton in canvas shoes. He jumped up to save a ball and sprained his foot. He sat on the ground for a long time in pain and couldn't get up. Don't waste money on this kind of unnecessary savings.

There is no need to follow the "must do list" on the Internet when recovering from exercise. Many people now say that stretching is completely useless. My own experience is that if you run 10 kilometers or do leg exercises that day and do 10 minutes of light muscle stretching, the delayed onset soreness the next day will indeed be much lighter. If you just walked and practiced yoga for half an hour that day, it is absolutely fine not to stretch. There is no requirement to do it. The most easily overlooked thing is rest. Don’t train hard every day just to hit sports KPIs. A runner I know ran 10 kilometers a day for 20 consecutive days in preparation for a half-marathon. In the end, he was diagnosed with fatigue periostitis of the tibia and fibula. He missed the race directly, which was not worth the gain.

In fact, to put it bluntly, there is no one-size-fits-all standard answer to sports injury prevention. The core is to pay more attention to how your body feels and don’t follow the trend. More than 90% of injuries can be avoided.