How To Avoid Common Injuries

It’s easy to avoid injuries when you’ve been going to the gym for a while and more importantly paying attention to things like technique and load. It’s also fairly easy to train for years without any major health issues especially if you haven’t lead a sedentary lifestyle for years prior to getting active. There are a few common injuries that you can avoid during that initial time period when you don’t know the technicalities of a good form or can measure how much weight you can lift.

Avoid Common Injuries

Squat form that works for both picking up weights and deadlifts

There are a few popular health complaints that you can hear from sedentary people who came to the gym. Lower back pain is probably one of the most common and there are quite a few moves that can make it worse and they don’t just include leg exercises. Bad knees may compete with the lower back problems and require special attention. So the first thing you can do to avoid making things worse is determine your problem and work around it.

Assume Good Form In All Positions

Many people do this. They are starting to do, say deadlifts and they pick up the weight with an arched back. Then they go into a starting position and assume their deadlift form and continue the exercise. The same happens when the weight goes down. This is a great way to pull some muscle in your lower back and worsen your lower back pain. When picking up or putting down the weights be sure to keep your back straight and drive the weight through your legs rather than back or arms.

Lift Smaller Weights

Women usually tend to pick up smaller weights, which is fine when you’re just starting. Now men tend to overdo things with the load, hence pulled muscles, bad delayed muscle pain, and probably worse. Start slowly, watch your body’s response to weights post-training as well as during the workouts.

Make Sure Your Body Recovers

Lack of recovery time is a straight way to injury or at least accumulated fatigue. Your body needs time to heal so be sure to plan your workouts so that you get enough rest time. You can’t go hard all the time, so you can either take weeklong breaks once in three months or better yet listen to your body and vary loads and volume according with how well/bad you recovered. Sometimes a missed workout can do your body much good.