Bodybuilding Injuries, How To Avoid Them
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) Make sure that you are doing it right. Ask someone if you don't know the right technique for a proper bench press or any other form of workout. Besides, if you're doing the exercise wrong, you'll probably end up stressing your joints making you more vulnerable to injuries. For example, when you are lifting up the dumbbells, you should never lower them with a jerk, since that easily result in tearing of the ligaments.
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) 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 a probable sign of a forthcoming injury. You must stop if you feel pain after your workout. Take som rest for some couple of days, or the time it takes for the pain to disappear.
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.