Thursday, July 23, 2009

5 Rules To Stay Injury-Free In The Gym

By Ricardo d Argence

While training hard and heavy may be awesome for your muscles, it can be trouble for the health of your joints and connective tissue. This is simply the reality of intense weight training, and while there are no guarantees that you will be able to completely avoid getting injured, you can certainly take specific steps to lessen the chance.

An injury is the absolute last thing you could ever hope for, as it will stop you dead in your muscle-building tracks. Down below I'm going to outline my "5 golden rules" when it comes to minimizing the risk of injury. If you can honestly say that you implement all 5 of these into your training program, then your risk of getting hurt will be much lower than someone who does not.

1) Always perform a thorough warmup. A proper warmup is the single best thing you can do to minimize your risk of injury. This simple 15-20 minute process will prepare your mind and body for the hard work to come by increasing blood flow into the surrounding connective tissue and by lubricating your joints. I would recommend that you perform 5 minutes of light cardiovascular exercise before each workout followed by 4-5 warmup sets for your first major exercise of the routine.

2) Always train with proper form. This should go without saying. Every exercise that you perform in the gym should be done with proper form and technique in order to keep the stress off of your joints. If you start squatting or deadlifting with a rounded back, jerking the weights around in a ballistic manner or performing dangerous exercises you are almost guaranteed to hurt yourself at some point.

3) Always train within your own personal limits. Weightlifting is a personal battle, and letting your ego take over is almost always a recipe for disaster. It doesn't matter what the guy next to you is benching and it is completely irrelevant to your training program. You must always use weights that you can handle and control with proper form, and if you start piling on the plates to impress the people around you, you'll be stretching your limits and putting yourself in a very vulnerable position.

4) Never try to over-train. If you feel that you can't handle it anymore, the best thing to do is stop and take some rest until the next set. This situation, perhaps is the most injury-prone that you can ever get yourself into.

5) Watch out for signs. Watch out for a probable sign of a forthcoming injury. Therefore, if you experience some pain after an intense workout, stop! Take a break for 1-2 days until the pain is completely gone.

In the next articles i'll teach you the specific way to perform a proper weightlifting warmup (something that the most of the lifters in the gym does not recognize nowadays), which will not only greatly decrease your chances of injury but will also result in virtually instant strength increases for your major exercises.

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