Recent advances in hydrogel—based wearable devices for sports monitoring and rehabilitation: Functional applications in training, injury prevention, and recovery

Hydrogels, owing to their superior softness, high water content, and excellent biocompatibility, are emerging as essential functional materials for next-generation wearable devices. In sports medicine and rehabilitation, hydrogel-based sensors enable real-time, noninvasive monitoring of multidimensional physiological and biomechanical parameters—including heart rate, respiration, sweat metabolites, and joint strain—thus providing new technological pathways for performance evaluation, injury risk prediction, and rehabilitation management. This review systematically summarizes recent progress in hydrogel applications for sports monitoring, injury prevention, and rehabilitation training, with a particular focus on stimulus-responsive hydrogels and key engineering strategies such as conductivity enhancement, pressure/strain sensing, self-healing mechanisms, stretchable electronics, and wireless integration. By highlighting advances in artificial intelligence–assisted data fusion, we further elucidate the potential of hydrogels for personalized training feedback and intelligent rehabilitation. Looking ahead, we outline future research directions in multifunctional system integration, interdisciplinary collaboration, and precision rehabilitation. Notably, anisotropic three-dimensional sensing hydrogels inspired by peripheral nerve structures offer new opportunities for complex motion recognition and personalized rehabilitation interventions. Overall, hydrogel-based wearable devices hold great promise as critical enablers of digital, personalized, and intelligent sports medicine, with profound implications for performance monitoring, injury prevention, and clinical recovery. • Review multifunctional hydrogel wearable sensors for sports monitoring and rehabilitation. • Correlate network structures with sensing performance and signal stability. • Summarize engineering strategies for conductivity, stretchability, and self-healing. • Highlight wireless integration and AI-driven data fusion for intelligent feedback. • Identify challenges in durability, standardization, and practical deployment.