Recent progress of hydrogels as sports medical materials: characteristics, modification strategies and application prospects in sports.

Hydrogels, innovative biomaterials defined by their three-dimensional porous structure, have attracted considerable attention in sports medicine for their unique physical and chemical properties. These properties enable applications in sports injury repair, sports health management, and sports injury protective equipment. By carefully selecting compositions, optimizing structures, and incorporating functional molecules or groups, these hydrogels can achieve enhanced biocompatibility, adhesion, tunable mechanical properties, and intelligent responsiveness, thereby better supporting sports medicine applications. Advances in hydrogel functionalization and performance modulation technologies have demonstrated their potential in applications such as intelligent ligaments, sports insoles, sports wound healing, artificial tendons, bone repair, coatings for sports medical devices, and motion monitoring. This review examines hydrogels with sports medical characteristics and their associated modification strategies. Additionally, this review discusses the current landscape and challenges of hydrogel applications in sports medicine, offering insights and direction for future research in this field.