4 Ways to Avoid Weight Lifting Injuries

Weight training and lifting are the key to having a toned and attractive physique, and whether you’re male or female, your body will benefit from building muscle.

When you go to the gym, it’s important to have a consistent weight training routine which allows you to have muscle engagement in both your lower and upper body.

The challenge with weight training is that it’s a lot more technical than being on the treadmill, and that means you’re more likely to get injured if you’re not careful. Many people who go to the gym to lift weights and get a benefit actually end up breaking their bodies down, when they should be building them up.

It’s important to preserve muscles when you train, and you need to make use of the proper techniques. Here are some of the ways you can light weights effectively without hurting yourself.

Don’t Train Tired

It’s tempting to work out as much as possible in the hopes of getting results faster, but we need to be paying attention to our bodies, especially when we’re tired or sleep deprived. The body needs rest and sleep as much as it needs exercise and we need to have balance between the two.

When we train tired, we increase the risk of injury because fatigue compromises our ability to do the workout well, and that puts us at risk of performing the lifting motions badly which can lead to unnecessary stress on the body.

A tired and fatigued body is also a stressed body, and we can risk overtraining our muscles which will inevitably lead to muscle breakdown.

Also when we’re tired, our brains lose focus and mental sharpness which makes us more prone to mistakes like handling weights and equipment the wrong way. If you feel tired and you’re due to go to the gym, rather skip the workout and rest and take it easy. The gym isn’t going anywhere, so don’t force it.

Don’t Train in Pain

Lifting weights is supposed to be challenging, but it’s not supposed to be excruciatingly painful. When we do a lifting workout, it’s normal to feel a squeeze in the muscle we’re focusing on, but if we experience pain, that could be a sign of an underlying injury or issue in the joints, muscles and ligaments.

Some workouts really take a toll of specific parts of our bodies, like when you do squats with heavy weights incorrectly, which can ultimately really hurt our knees or cause a serious back injury. If you’re experiencing pain when you work out, stop immediately and talk to a medical professional, preferably an orthopedic one.

You might discover that you’re in need of a procedure to make sure you don’t incur further injury. It’s also important to invest the time and money in orthopedic surgery recovery so that you’re not prematurely returning to exercise which can do a lot more damage and harm.

Prioritize Proper Form & Don’t Lift too Heavy

The top causes of weight lifting injuries are lifting weights that are way too heavy and not doing the workout in the proper form.

Weight lifting is more technical and in order to get the muscle engagement and results that you desire, each workout has to be done correctly.

You have to hold the weight in a certain way, and actually perform the lift in a specific way, and when you don’t, you risk injury. One of the keys to having the right form in your workout is to lift the right amount of weight.

Many people make the mistake of trying to lift really heavy which will compromise the form and actually do more harm than good. Lift light enough to have proper form and full range of motion but heavy enough for it to still be challenging.

Instead of feeling pressure to lift the biggest and heaviest weights, focus on preserving your muscles and keeping your body healthy.

Don’t Overtrain

Overtraining is one of the biggest dangers of people who are incredibly active at the gym. It’s critical to structure our workouts so that each muscle group we train gets enough time to rest and recover.

One mistake many people make is not interchanging the training of different muscle groups by having variability in the workouts they do. For example, focusing on the lower body one day and upper body the next will give muscles ample time to rest and also build up the muscle.

This is one way to avoid putting too much strain on one particular part of the body which is what happens when you do full body workouts every single day.

Weight training is an important part of getting the body that you want, but you can only get this benefit when you do it right. By taking the right steps, we can make sure we get the results that we want, and keep our bodies healthy for years to come.