How to Avoid Training Injuries
Knowing how to avoid exercise-induced injuries is vital to keep you exercising regularly and help you live a long, healthy life.
Exercise improves our emotional well being, it helps us prevent and manage many diseases and, it keeps us mentally sharp.
Whether it is walking the dog, visiting your personal trainer 3 times a week or running, every hour you spend exercising now is an investment in your future health.
For those of you who are just starting on your fitness journey, it is important to be aware that with any change in activity levels, there is an increase in your risk of injury.
With any change in activity levels, comes the risk of injury
Factors such as unfamiliar new exercises techniques and a body that may have become deconditioned over many years of inactivity can lead to an increase in your risk of injury.
Even for those people who exercise regularly, sudden changes in activity levels, miles run or weights lifted can increase your risk of injury.
However, with the right knowledge and help, these risks can be minimized or eliminated completely.
Exercised Induced Injury
The human body has an amazing capacity to evolve and adapt to new activities.
As we increase our activity levels, small amounts of micro-damage occur in the bones, tendons and ligaments.
This micro-damage acts as a trigger for the body to start the adaptation process that makes the body part under stress stronger.
If however, we push too hard to quickly and subject our bodies to more stress than they can cope with, this will produce more damage and more abnormal changes that often represent as pain, swelling, and inflammation.
This is an exercise-induced injury.
When tissues are damaged, their ability to cope with normal activities will then become compromised and can result in severe pain and ongoing disablement with normal activities as well as during exercise.
So what is the best way to avoid exercise errors and make sure our bodies can get stronger and fitter without risking injury?
Getting stronger & fitter without risking injury
Here are my top 5 tips for preventing training injuries:
1. Get a health check before you start:
Before starting your new exercise program, see you GP or health practitioner to make sure you don’t have any undiagnosed health concerns that may cause you problems with increased activity.
2. Get professional help to get you started:
A great personal trainer is an excellent way to get you started safely and give you advice about how to progress your training without overloading your body and risking injury,
3. Gradually increase your training to ensure your body has time to adapt:
Too much too quickly will lead to injury. As a general rule of thumb, never increase your training by more than 10% per week.
4. Focus on your technique to ensure you are safely loading your body correctly:
There is no point in smashing out multiple reps of an exercise badly as this will just increase your risk of injury.
Performing fewer repetitions with excellent technique is much safer and will give you bigger gains in the long term.
5. Get small problems checked early to limit their effect on you:
We all run up against some niggles with activity of any type.
Getting these little problems checked early significantly reduces the risk of them becoming a bigger problem that could derail your exercise commitment.
Exercise is vitally important to make sure you stay healthy and fit.
To avoid injury, follow the above tips to stay strong and keep your exercise routine on track.
I'm so confident I can help you that I'd love to chat with you personally about your training injuries, it's what I'm passionate about!
Contact us on 8330 0004 or Book Online
Yours in helping build amazing lives from the feet up.
Anthony Robinson
Director of Complete Podiatry