6 Exercise Mistakes That Can Cause Injuries
Exercising on a regular basis is one of the most important things you need to do in order to stay healthy and ensure that you maintain said health as you get older. This has been a universal truth for decades now, and still some people underestimate the importance of it.
An adult should be doing about 150 minutes of aerobic exercise every week and also doing strength training for all major muscle groups at least twice a week too. This is the bare minimum to ensure that you can avoid things like heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers and also some mental health issues too.
Aside from just general laziness, one thing that puts a lot of people off doing exercise is concern over hurting themselves. And this is a very valid concern, especially when it comes to doing strength training.
If you’re inexperienced and you start going to lift weights in the gym, you definitely need to be careful because there are a lot of mistakes you can make which can result in injuries. Serious ones too in some cases.
Let’s take a look at six major mistakes you need to try and avoid:
1. Missing Rest Days
For low-intensity aerobic exercise such as swimming, cycling, or a brisk walk, rest days aren’t something that you need to think about. You can do all of that stuff every day and not see any ill effects from it.
But rest days are very important for strength training or if you are doing some more intense cardio workouts. Regular exercise drains our body’s energy and fluid stores and they need to be replenished afterwards.
This usually takes about 24 hours, and you also need to give muscles that you worked on a chance to repair themselves, so you shouldn’t work the same muscle groups two days in a row. You can put them under strain which can lead to a tear or some other kind of injury.
2. Not Warming Up
The goal of doing a warm-up before your workout is to increase your body temperature so that you have more oxygen circulating throughout your muscles. This increases their elasticity by helping them to contract and relax more easily.
The more elasticity present in your muscles, the more you’ll be able to avoid causing damage when putting them under pressure. Launching straight into a workout without a warm-up is a big shock to the system and may lead to injury.
I think this is especially important the older you get. Middle-aged women for example, can be very prone to certain kinds of injuries when partaking in strenuous exercise and it’s important to take the necessary steps to prevent that.
And a lot of that comes down to preparing your body ahead of time. One thing which can help is a keto diet to ensure your body has the right nutrients to protect your muscles, and then coupling that with an effective warmup routine will keep your body safe during exercise.
3. Bad Form
Form might be the most important thing to remember when considering safety in the gym. If you haven’t heard the term before, it simply refers to your body position when you’re doing a specific exercise.
It mainly comes down to your stance, your posture and which muscles you are engaging when you’re doing the exercise. Having bad form means your body isn’t ready to do the exercise safely and you’re putting muscles at risk.
Something very dangerous about it is the fact that bad form doesn’t guarantee you won’t manage the exercise, and so a lot of people don’t even realize how dangerous their form is until it goes wrong. You need to study the correct form for everything you want to do and practice rigorously.
4. Ignoring Unusual Pain
No matter how safe and prepared you are, sometimes you just get unlucky and hurt yourself even when you’ve taken all the necessary precautions. That’s why you need to listen to your body, and if something seems off, then stop exercising and get it checked out.
If you have pain in your legs, back, shoulders or anywhere, that feels more severe than normal exercise-induced muscle soreness, it could be an injury that you will aggravate by trying to push through.
Don’t try to be a hero, just take a break from your exercise and get a doctor to make sure nothing is wrong. If you regularly have more pain than you feel is normal and there doesn’t seem to be a reason why, you might just have flexibility issues and you could look into doing some yoga to ease that pain.
5. Wearing the Wrong Footwear
It’s difficult to exercise unless you have specifically designed workout clothes anyway, but your shoes are especially important because that’s where you’re going to get support while putting pressure on yourself.
Don’t just buy any pair of sneakers in your size, you should get a pair professionally fitted and make sure that they are firm, flexible and will ensure that you maintain a proper stance and gait while moving.
6. Going Too Hard Too Soon
You have to exercise at your own pace. When you first start going to the gym and you see people who have been doing it a lot longer than you lifting heavier weights and doing more reps and that might push you to want to do more than you’re ready for.
Don’t let your ego or your ambition get in the way though. You can work up to it, but you need to be patient. Again, listen to your body, you will know what level of intensity you are capable of and safe to keep working at.
Stick to it and as time goes on you will be able to do more and more. Pushing yourself too hard is only going to put you at risk.
As long as you are familiar with the fact that strength training comes with a certain amount of risk and you know how to avoid these risks, you should be able to improve your body and maintain your health without getting injured.
It’s important to remember that you’re not exercising to impress anyone, nor to achieve instantaneous results. It should all be in service of your health and wellbeing.