Whether in sports or in rehabilitation, preparation activities are extremely important but often overlooked. Sports injuries are a common occurrence in our daily lives, and as people’s participation in sports increases, so do the number of sports injuries. However, why sports often bring many people who pursue health and love exercise are always long injuries, to the physical and mental, work and family not only caused a serious burden, and even serious disability, the culprit is the neglect of preparatory activities before sports participation. Preparation activities are an important part of the exercise and rehabilitation process!
Exercise is a double-edged sword, not all exercise is good for the body, exercise is a science, how scientific exercise is particularly important for health, whether it is sports training or rehabilitation training, a scientific training session is at least composed of three parts, that is, preparatory activities, training content, finishing activities. The most common injury in my clinical rehabilitation work is ACL rupture, many patients are involved in intense basketball without preparatory activities, followed by medial and lateral collateral ligament injury, patellar dislocation, patellar tendon rupture, s cord muscle strain, ankle sprain, lumbar sprain, shoulder, elbow, wrist injury and various soft tissue injuries. The injury often occurs in skiing, soccer, basketball, badminton, gym training and all kinds of running and jumping and throwing sports. Rehabilitation treatment timely may be able to maximize the recovery of normal movement patterns, if not timely may fall dysfunction.
Combined with professional knowledge and clinical experience analysis, basically most of the patients who have sports trauma have similarly neglected an important link – not doing sufficient preparation activities before sports!
Why should we do preparation activities?
First of all, the human motor system is composed of three aspects: bones, bone joints and muscles. Here the bones are equivalent to levers, bone joints are equivalent to fulcrums, and muscles are the source of power. That is to say, the human body as long as the moment from the movement of both the process of muscle contraction to provide energy, but also in the completion of the body from rest to movement of the transition. The preparation activity is the body in the completion of this complex transformation of the important guarantee! Our muscles are rich in capillaries, the human body has about 3,000 capillaries per square millimeter of muscle, but only about a hundred capillaries are open in the muscles when quiet, when strenuous exercise or after adequate preparation activities to open all.
At the same time, it must be said that human muscles have three important physical properties that cannot be ignored: elasticity, extensibility, and viscosity. The most important is the viscosity, he will produce a resistance when the muscle contraction, when the body is at rest muscle elasticity is low, poor extension, high viscosity. This is a muscle saving mechanism, at this time the muscle state in a state of low temperature flexibility, if this time suddenly large intensity of intense exercise, the muscle will occur in a large intensity of forceful contraction, this time the body will be overcoming resistance from the human body while also overcoming the higher in muscle contraction or elongation appears in the muscle fibers, between the muscles, or between the muscle groups due to friction and external expression of force. At this time, if the muscle strength is insufficient, and to complete the strenuous exercise, in the original muscle, antagonistic muscle, synergistic muscle, fixed muscle may appear strains, according to the different ways of sports injury will appear in different parts, such as bones, joints, muscles and some muscle auxiliary structures may appear in the injury, and is the first weak link strains.
Secondly, adequate preparatory activities can improve muscle stretch and flexibility, while increasing the range of motion, enhance joint flexibility, plays an important role in the prevention of muscle strains. Adequate preparatory activities can improve muscle temperature, and muscle viscosity size is related to temperature, the higher the temperature viscosity is small, and vice versa. Therefore, especially in the case of low temperatures for exercise, it is necessary to do a good job of preparation activities, only after a full warm-up, in order to reduce muscle viscosity, improve the speed of muscle contraction and relaxation, which can increase the ability to exercise, but also can greatly reduce the occurrence of sports injuries! There are many benefits of good preparation activities, an effective preparation activity can speed up the heart rate and breathing, thereby accelerating blood flow and promoting the transport of nutrients and oxygen to the working muscles. It also helps muscles, tendons and joints prepare for intense exercise.
How should preparation activities be organized?
The most important point of preparation activities is to start with simple and gentle activities, and then gradually carry out a large number of activities, until the body’s physiological state of mind to achieve the best, the body for sports participation before the more adequate preparation activities, the chances of sports injuries will be reduced to a minimum.
In order to achieve these purposes, how should the preparation activities be arranged? A scientific and effective preparation activities should include four aspects.
1, general preparation activities.
2.Static stretching.
3.Specific preparatory activities for specific sports
4.Dynamic stretching
These four steps are very important, any step should not be ignored, only they work together to achieve the best physiological and psychological state, to ensure that as little as possible to occur in sports injuries.
1.General preparatory activities
General preparatory activities generally consist of light physical activity, the level of function of the sportsman determines the intensity and duration of general preparatory activities, general preparatory activities for the average person in about 5 to 10 minutes, athletes can be extended or shortened according to the level of exercise appropriate time, generally reach the body slightly sweating is appropriate.
2.Static stretching
The so-called static stretching is to put the body in a certain position and make the stretched muscles in a passive state of tension. He is a safe and effective way of stretching, the probability of sports injury is very small, and helps to improve the flexibility of the whole body and increase the range of motion, laying a good foundation for strenuous exercise. Static stretching mainly for the body’s major muscle groups, the complete stretching process should be in 5 to 10 minutes.
3.Specific preparatory activities for specific sports
At this stage, specific targeted preparatory activities should be carried out according to the sports to be engaged in, so that the body can enter a specific state of readiness. Therefore, at this stage to carry out more powerful preparatory activities, gradually approaching the state of the process of exercise, the content of the activity should reflect the requirements of the sport for the movement mode and type of action.
4.Dynamic stretching
A professional preparation activity should end with a series of dynamic stretching movements. If this form of stretching is not performed correctly there is also a high risk of injury during the exercise. The purpose of dynamic stretching is to improve muscle conditioning and flexibility in sports, and is mainly suitable for professionally trained or physically fit people. Dynamic stretching should only be performed if the body has been fully stretched.
Dynamic stretching should use some controlled, gentle bouncing or twisting movements to bring specific parts of the body to the limits of their range of motion. The strength of the bounce and the amplitude of the twist should increase gradually rather than suddenly. This is the final stage of preparation activities, the body should be at this time to achieve the best state of physiology and heart, so that the body can be prepared to deal with the difficult movement, so as to greatly reduce the occurrence of sports injuries!
In addition to studies showing that more than 27,000 people sprain their ankles every day in the United States, the Australian Journal of Sports Medicine also points out that up to 1 in 17 sports participants will suffer a sports injury while playing their favorite sport, which is even higher than contact sports such as soccer and rugby, yet the really disturbing fact is that up to 50% of these sports injuries can be avoided. Whether you want to improve your athletic performance or get healthy through sports, the best way to stay away from sports injuries is to avoid them. How should sports injuries be avoided? This article describes some of the techniques and strategies for sports injuries, if you can follow the right way to exercise, you can avoid up to 50% of sports injuries. The only way to effectively avoid sports injuries is to prepare well before exercise. For sports injuries, prevention is better than cure!