Well, I have unfortunately been injured and so I was inspired to write this post (it’s really hard to type, so I hope you enjoy this!). Although it was unavoidable, there are many injuries that ARE avoidable, especially in the gym! Here they are:
1. Always use proper form
I’ve touched on this in many posts, especially the video tutorials. Using bad form while lifting weights can lead to all kinds of injuries. Injury on account of bad form occurs because of a transfer of stress from weight that is placed on an unintended part of the body. For example, if you’re doing a bicep curl and you’re swinging back and forth, the stress is switched from your bicep to your lower back and shoulder. Check out this article by SG Fitness, it talks about this very same exercise.
2. Never lift more than you can manage
Why’s that so important? Here’s some food for thought from Peak Performance:
Thinking about strength training from a different angle, it is interesting to consider the fact that muscles are attached to tendons and that connective tissue runs parallel to the muscle fibres through the muscle. This means that in many athletic movements the force is produced not just from the muscle contraction but also from a release of elastic energy from the tendon component. Therefore it is useful to think of force production as coming from a ‘muscle tendon unit’ (MTU) working as one system, whose two components may come into effect at different times.”
That brings me to my point. While weightlifting and strength training does strengthen your muscles, it might not do the same for your tendon. Therefore, your muscles could be capable of lifting a certain amount whereas your tendon might not be at that level. So by overlifting, you’re putting too much stress on your tendons and therefore could injure yourself because the tendons, not the muscles, are incapable of handling more weight.
3. Stick to a certain amount of reps and sets
The University of North Carolina Campus Health Services say:
The benefits of exercise quickly become apparent. You feel great. You want to do more, run further and lift heavier. Beginners often try to do to much to soon, and find themselves getting injured.”
By getting ahead of yourself and trying to push it, doing more reps and sets, you can push yourself too far, causing injury. Listen to your body. By all means, you want to work out hard, but don’t overdue it. Use your head and you’ll quickly identify what you can and cannot do.
4. Always give your muscles time to recover
This is one of the most important parts of exercising. It is well known that when you strength train, you tear muscle fibers. Well, when you rest, you rebuild bigger muscles. That’s the point. So how much rest is necessary? Dr. Miriam E. Nelson of Tufts University says:
It is important to take a day off between exercising each muscle group. If your muscles continue to be very sore, wait one more day.”
5. Stretch
This one can prevent SO many injuries. However, HOW you stretch may make all the difference. In a study done by MedScape, their findings indicated that:
Ten cycles to 50% of failure force resulted in an increase in muscle stretch at failure with no change in the force at failure or energy absorbed. When muscles were cyclically stretched to 70% of failure force, macroscopic evidence of failure was seen even before the 10 cycles were completed. Thus, cyclic stretching appears to be beneficial and stretching that leads to forces in excess of 70% may make the muscle more, rather than less, susceptible to injury.”
So make sure you don’t push yourself too hard while stretching, it may do more harm than good!
We’ll look at the other tips for avoiding injury at the gym in the next post.
Earn Your Cheat Day 