Tips to Avoid Injury When Strength Training

There are few things more frustrating when you’re training than picking up an injury. It may be a small niggle, which means you have to take it easy for a week or something more serious, which can put you out of action for months. Either way, it can throw a serious spanner in your training routine and stop or delay you reaching your goals.

Injury is part of sport and fitness, and even international athletes who have professional coaches and support teams will pick up injuries. However, there are measures you can take that reduce the chance of injuries. In this post, we take a look at some top tips to avoid injury when strength training.

Warm-Up

Whatever exercise you are doing, you should always warm up properly beforehand. Many people either skip this all together or do a super quick warm-up that has little benefit. A proper warm-up should be considered as an essential part of your training regime. By stretching your muscles, getting the blood flowing and oxygenating your cells, you are preparing your body for the work ahead. If you want to avoid injury when strength training and achieve optimum performance, then you need to warm up your body first.

Give Your Body the Right Fuel

To get the best out of your body, you need to give it the fuel it needs. Good nutrition is vital in keeping muscles strong and healthy while strength training. If you’re working with a personal trainer or nutritionist, then they will be able to provide help and guidance to ensure you get a high quality balanced diet that will support your training goals.

Staying hydrated is also essential. Being dehydrated can cause fatigue, muscle cramps and lower your stamina and endurance. It also makes it harder to burn fat and can lead to digestive problems. It’s recommended that an average adult drink around 2 litres of water per day. This amount varies from person to person. If your training hard, and sweating a lot, then your average amount should be increased.

Listen to Your Body

We looked at the importance of rest days in our last blog post, so please have a read if you’d like to know more.

Your body is good at letting you know when you can do more and when you should ease back. It’s fine to push your body to its limits sometimes, but this needs to be incorporated into a training regime that also allows your body to rest and recover. It’s during rest periods when many of the benefits of training occur. To help prevent injury when strength training build in rest days to let your muscles repair and heal.

Get Professional Support

Access to high-quality gyms and training equipment has increased enormously over the last decade. Pay as you go, and low monthly membership gyms are popping up everywhere, giving more people access to good facilities. This is great news, but it can also lead to injuries as people use strength training equipment in the wrong way or set weight levels too high.

A personal trainer can provide a tailored strength training programme that will deliver the results you want. They will show you what exercises you should be doing and also how you should be doing them as well as providing a gradual progression path as your body develops. This managed approach can be a big factor is avoiding injury when strength training.