6 effective ways to prevent injuries during your fitness regime

The sedentary lifestyle coupled with our tendency to binge eat during the weekends has unsavory results. However, if you are one of those people who is adept at balancing their penchant to eat unhealthy food occasionally with a regular workout regime, then you have mastered the art of balancing your diet and your life. Though working out in the gym is an incredible way of staying fit, it does pose a risk of sustaining injuries during your fitness regime.

One of the ways of preventing these workout injuries to ensure that your gym trainer supervises the various exercises you perform. Another way of ensuring that you don’t sustain any workout injuries during your fitness regime is to adhere to certain preventive measures that can help you steer clear of fitness injuries completely.

Here are some of the effective ways in which you can prevent workout injuries.

Warm-up and cool-down
Your gym trainer must have impressed the need to warm-up before you begin your workout and ending it with a cool-down period. Even if you are about to start walking on the treadmill, it is imperative that you warm-up before you start jogging on it. Warm-up exercises are an effective way of preventing fitness injuries because they help the body get ready for exercise. These warmups increase your heart rate and loosen the muscles and joints, thereby, preventing cramps during the workout. After you complete your workout and before wrapping up, it is equally important to cool down your body. During the cool-down period, the heart rate comes back to normal.

Stretch
There’s a reason why your gym trainer asks you to perform stretching exercises before and after your workout session. Dynamic stretching exercises are an excellent way of increasing your body’s flexibility. Moreover, it helps in preventing fitness injuries. So, make it a habit to perform stretching exercises after your warm-up and cool-down periods.

Say yes to cross-training
Of course, you need to get those washboard abs in a month’s time, but this doesn’t imply that you keep repeating the same exercises every single day. Doing so increases the strain on the same muscles, which can lead to overuse and repetitive-use injuries. So, instead of obsessing over a particular area of the body make sure to cross-train. For instance, you can run on day one, perform back exercises on day two, do squats and lunges on day three, and so on. This will reduce your chances of sustaining any fitness injury that arises out of repetition and overuse.

Understand your trouble spots
It is essential to understand the problem areas and ensuring that you don’t put undue pressure on these areas, and this helps in avoiding any potential fitness injuries. For instance, if you have an old shoulder injury, you need to go easy on shoulder exercises. Instead of pumping weights right away, it is advisable to increase the weight gradually. This will help you build strength and the exercises won’t hurt.

Keep fueling your body
It is a myth that you aren’t supposed to drink water between your workout regime. It is essential to drink plenty of water before, during, and after the workout. Drinking at least 17 to 20 ounces of water about 2 or 3 hours before exercising ensures that you stay hydrated, and this is the best way of avoiding any muscle cramps.

Listen to your body
The first thing to do when you start your fitness regime is to throw the age-old maxim “no pain, no gain” right out the window. When you workout, you’ll experience muscle soreness, which is a completely normal phenomenon. However, if your muscles pain or any part of the body hurts then you are doing something wrong. So, ensure that you don’t push yourself in a bid to adhere to baseless beliefs and the moment you experience pain, it’s a sign that you have sustained some injury. To avoid such unpleasant situations, ensure that you listen to your body, and stop when it says to stop.