Wednesday, July 15, 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.

If you don't take care of your muscles you will never succed in bodybuilding. And an injury is the last thing you need. In this article, you will find the 5 golden rules to avoid injuries during your training.

1) Never begin without a proper warmup. A proper warmup is something you must perform every single day before your routine, because it will decrease amazingly your chances of injury. Also, it will increase the amount of weight that you are able to lift during your actual workout. So, its necessary if you want to achieve better results and protect your own body. This activity will increase the temperature of your body and will stimulate your heart and lungs. It will also lubricate your joints.

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) You must never try to compete. It is an obvious situation that if a bigger guy is training next to you, you will definitely want to outdo him. Well, if you ever feel like doing so, don't, because you are just inviting trouble. That's because your ego is perhaps the rival greatest rival you're dealing with which is nothing but a recipe for disaster. Don't even bother how much the guy next to you is lifting. Stick to your training program.

4) Find your own limits. When you can move your arms (or legs) another inch, it's maybe time to take some rest. If don't do it so, you will not perform your next set in the best conditions, and your effort will not be maximum. So, what you will get in that set is nothing but poor results and, perhaps, an injury.

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.

More often than not, it will only get worse. If you feel that something definitely isn't right and can sense that you probably shouldn't be training, get the problem checked out by a professional and then take the proper measures to heal. While it may hurt your progress in the short term, the overall long-term effect will be a positive one.

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