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Avoid Injuries
It’s best to keep fit and healthy by exercising, though you might run the risk of injury. But you can avoid being injured if you follow some guidelines, and practice the exercises within safe limits. Here’s what you should do:
- Warm ups: These are very necessary to begin with. If you do some gentle exercises for warm-ups, they will prevent you from muscle damage during your workout and help you grow more flexible faster. About 5-10 minutes of warm-ups are quite sufficient before beginning on your workout.
- Dress right: You must dress right to do exercise. Not only should your get-up be comfortable, but they must suit the exercise you do. Buy good shoes, or you will end up with sprains and long-term injury. Your clothes must be loose-fitting and sweat-absorbent, besides being comfortable too.
- Find a good instructor: No matter what school of exercise you choose, it is imperative that you choose a good instructor. See that he gives you proper instruction on the right poses and that he is a certified instructor. You could even ask him where he received his training from. By finding out his credentials, you will put yourself in a comfortable position and avoid any injury to yourself.
Before setting out on an exercise program, you should also check with your doctor and tell him of any specific problems you have.
- Commit time and energy to exercise: You must set aside a certain amount of time each day for exercise and believe in the fact that exercise time is non-negotiable. Commit time also in terms of goals which you must achieve within a certain time frame.
- Change and alternate: Combine strenuous exercises with a few that aren’t as demanding. This prevents you from over-exerting yourself, and gives your body more time to recover from spells of high intensity activity.
- Cool downs: Work your way towards reaching the end of a workout. Don’t come to a sudden halt in the middle of a strenuous workout or this will make the blood reach and collect in your leg veins, making you feel dizzy. If you do cool downs, it will give enough time for the lactic acid produced by your muscles during vigorous activity to be cleared with just a few gentle exercises or cool downs.
- If it hurts, stop: If at any time of your workout, exercising hurts, stop until the pain goes away. If you experience dizziness, nausea or shortness of breath, see your doctor immediately and don’t exercise if you are ill.
Tips:
- Always align your head, shoulder and pelvis.
- Do more exercises than abdominal crunches as they could focus only on the abdomen instead of supporting muscles of the spine, pelvis and hips.
- If you suffer from back pain, avoid exercises involving bending and twisting the spine because they place great stress on the intervertebral disks.
Most of all, give yourself sufficient time to see how effective your exercising has been. Getting results from exercising takes a lot of time, commitment and patience.
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