Sports Injury Prevention Strategies

By first controlling the load intensity based on your own movement, dynamically adjusting the action pattern to suit your own physiological structure, proactively intervening as soon as signs of injury occur, and then making flexible adjustments based on the characteristics of different sports, you can avoid more than 90% of non-accidental sports injuries.

A while ago, a sophomore girl came to my studio. She danced with an online fat-burning exercise blogger for two weeks. She danced for 70 minutes every day. When she danced, her knees hurt, so she gritted her teeth and carried it. In the end, the pain was so bad that she couldn’t go up and down the stairs. She took an MRI and found that she had patellar tendon disease. To put it bluntly, she jumped too hard and her movements were crooked, which caused inflammation of the tendons. When many people first start exercising, they always think that "the harder they practice, the better the effect will be." In fact, excessive load is the number one cause of injuries for all novices. Regarding load control, there are currently two mainstream ideas in the circle. One is the "10% principle" that has been used for decades. That is, the increase in exercise duration, weight and total mileage each week does not exceed 10% of the previous week. This standard has a high error tolerance and is especially friendly to novices with no exercise experience. You don't have to think hard, just increase the amount, and it is not easy to cause problems. However, in the past two years, more and more physical fitness coaches have advocated "dynamic load adjustment". They do not stick to rigid numbers, but first check their resting heart rate, sleep quality, and fatigue the day before every morning. If you stayed up late the night before and your resting heart rate is 8-10 beats higher than usual, you can cut your exercise intensity in half for that day, or even switch to walking. After all, your physical condition fluctuates, and practicing hard will only leave room for injury. There is no absolute superiority between these two ideas. Novices can choose the former to save worry, while those with more than one year of sports experience and can keenly sense physical conditions can choose the latter for greater flexibility.

Of course, just controlling the load is not enough. Wrong movements mean it is useless. "Knees cannot pass over the toes when squatting" has been widely circulated on the Internet in the past two years. I don't know how many people have been fooled. In order to meet this standard, I have seen several students squatting with their upper bodies very low when squatting. In fact, the sports medicine community has long had a clear conclusion: as long as the hip, knee, and ankle force lines are normal and the knees move in the direction of the toes, even if they exceed the toes, it will not add extra burden to the knee joints. On the contrary, deliberately suppressing movements is the culprit of waist and knee injuries. And the movement standards are never uniform. Take running landing as an example. Some people say that landing on the forefoot saves effort and does not hurt the knees. Some say landing on the heel is more stable. In fact, it depends on the foot type: people with high arches have strong arch cushioning, and landing on the forefoot can further absorb impact. People with flat feet have collapsed arches. Forcing the landing on the forefoot will only transmit all the pressure to the plantar fascia and ankle joints, which makes it easier to get plantar fasciitis. It is suitable to wear supportive running shoes and use the heel transition landing method. There is an old man in the badminton hall I often go to who has been playing for five years. When smashing the ball, he always has the habit of not moving his hips and relying on his waist to exert force. He always says that he has "good waist strength." However, after killing the ball last month, he couldn't stand up immediately. He was diagnosed with lumbar disc herniation. This is because the typical movement pattern does not match his own force-generating habits. The longer he practices, the more serious the injury will be.

Many people have a particularly high tolerance for pain. They always feel that "adding pain to reduce numbness without practicing" is hypocritical. A little pain means it is effective. They don't go to the hospital until the pain is so severe that they can't move, and they often have to recover for several months. I stepped on this pit when I was preparing for a marathon two years ago. After running 16 kilometers, the outside of my right knee became sore and swollen. I was thinking that I would finish the race with 3 kilometers left, so I gritted my teeth and finished it. However, the pain was so bad that I couldn't go up and down the stairs the next day. I had iliotibial band friction syndrome, and it took me three weeks before I dared to jog again. There are two different ideas about how to deal with discomfort after it occurs. Conservatives suggest that as long as there is stinging or pain when exerting force, training should be stopped completely, and then resume after the pain completely disappears to avoid secondary injuries. ； Rehabilitation circles now recommend "active rest". Instead of stopping completely, you can switch to low-load rehabilitation exercises to activate peripheral muscles. For example, if you have mild patellar tendonitis, you don't need to stop running completely. You can jog 2-3 kilometers each time. Add 10 minutes of silent squatting every day to strengthen the quadriceps muscles. On the contrary, you can recover faster than completely lying in bed. Which one to choose depends on the degree of injury. If the pain is so severe that walking is difficult, you must stop first. If it is only slightly sore after exercise and you feel nothing when walking normally, you can adjust and practice at the same time.

In fact, I have been a physical trainer for so many years, and 90% of the injuries I have seen are not accidents. They are all caused by "eager for quick success" - either you want to lose 20 kilograms in a month and practice hard every day, or you see others can deadlift 150 kilograms and you grit your teeth, or you think you can carry it even though your movements are crooked. Exercise is really about slow and fast. It is more reliable to spend more energy to feel your body than to follow other people's plans. After all, you can keep moving without getting hurt, right?