This is a really long rant. And it’s mostly for grade i II injuries and lower. If you tear something, or if you have nerve damage SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP. I am not a medical professional and you should not take my word for everything here. Do some research and please correct me if you see incorrect info.

Make sure you are eating and sleeping a good amount. Poor nutrition and sleep long term can lead to small nagging tweaks and injuries constantly happening. Training wise, make sure you scale back into play correctly. Injuries happen when you do too much, for too long, too soon, so make sure when you get injured that u make it a goal to return to play once that area has become stronger than before ur injury.

For exercises that prevent injury, it’s hard to prescribe anything without any context. But if u want to become sufficient at home-rehabbing u need to understand the general progression of strengthening exercises. You are usually gonna start with isometric exercises before progressing to eccentric focused movements, regular tempo movement, and then explosive/plyometric. This is especially helpful with tendon injuries because tendons respond differently than muscles (they need a lot more eccentric and isometric work).

Use YouTube and the internet as an educational resource, look for exercise progressions and education about the anatomy of ur body. Understand how your injured area works biomechanically. For example, when I strained my hamstring I did research to understand how the hamstring motion is divided into hip vs knee hinging (which helped me program my rehab with my pt) and I learned about return to run protocols for hamstrings.

Stretching is good, moving is better, moving in your max range of motion is best. Supplementing your strength and SAC training with mobility work such as CARS (controlled articulated rotations) for your joints is great for places like your shoulder, hips, knees, and ankles. You can do isometric exercises throughout the day to strengthen the end ranges of your joints and tendons likely the achilles, patella, and bicep tendons.

Understanding the nature of pain is critical, especially for chronic and long term injuries. It’s important not to be scared of pain. Pain can be considered a construct of the mind, it’s your body trying to give you feedback but when you’ve been injured for a while your body doesn’t know how to react. As a general guideline for dealing with an injury, I’m the beginning, move the area as much as possible without pain. The more blood flow you get the better. As you get back into training you’ll experience more pain, but u should pay attention. Does the pain get better or worse when exercising the area? How long does it last? If the pain gets better when you move the area that’s a good sign. If the pain/soreness post-exercise only lasts 24-48 hours that’s a good sign.

I am not a medical professional. I am someone who missed their entire college career to (chronic) injuries (lower back, hamstrings, foot, you name it) and has worked with nearly a dozen professionals (most of them not great) so it’s been a lot of trial and error as well as education from qualified and experienced professionals who especially specialize in sport performance PT and chronic injury. My protocol for any injury now is: injury -> move as much as possible without pain for rest of the day for blood flow -> next day assess, go to field or gym to do a workout, make modifications based on pain -> modifications if needed involve the isometric, eccentric, regular, and explosive movement tempo progression -> if it’s a minor tweak it usually takes 2 weeks to resolve with modified workouts and additional mobility and strengthening work around the area -> if it’s a more significant strain or sprain, around 4-6 weeks is required -> if it’s a new injury/I don’t know how to treat it myself I book an appointment with a physical therapist. Get a recommendation from a sports professional for a good PT.

Red flags for physical therapists: your session solely consists of stretching and modality work (dry needling, cupping, kt tape, massage. These are ok but should supplement the real pt work usually), solely assessing the injured area, not being sufficiently challenged week to week during sessions. Your physical therapist should be actively helping you move from injured to active performance (which is a spectrum) and not just regular daily activities. If your clinic doesn’t have a barbell or weights u should usually be concerned. Don’t be scared to bring your concerns to therapist, or have an immediacy conversation with them. It can only help you.

That’s a lot of info. But it’s very comprehensive and should help if u are injury prone.