When it comes to injuries in the gym, fitness professionals are no stranger to them. An ounce of prevention is much more worth it than risking injury and being unable to recover quick enough. There’s nothing that can short circuit your workout program as fast as a brand new injury can. It’s not just shoulder injuries you have to watch out for or sprained ankles, and it’s not even the fact that somebody could drop a bar on their foot. 

It’s those sprained wrists as you try to lift or you go too much too soon with the weight limit you can manage. Of course, most gym related injuries are easily fixable, but with a little intervention on your part, you can ensure that you don’t get injured at all. Sure, you could learn how to tape a sprained wrist with KT tape, but you still need to learn how to avoid those injuries in the first place. So, with that in mind, we’ve got some tips to help.

Remember, don’t go too fast too soon.

It’s nice that you can increase your personal best when it comes to being in the gym, but when you are lifting and you’ve been doing 15 kilos for a while and you want to graduate to 20, you should proceed with caution. If you go too far too fast because you are trying to impress yourself or somebody else, you could end up injured and you don’t have to be. Focusing on the mind and muscle connection is important here, and your form should come before the weight being lifted. There’s no use in lifting any kind of weight unless you are able to do it with the right posture. Posture means everything when it comes to safe lifting.

Respect your own limits.

One of the most crucial ingredients in your training is fatigue. Your muscles and your energy systems need fatigue to get stronger and more efficient. Fatigue will help you to slow your body down and pay attention to the cues that you need that tell you that things need to be slowed. If you are not slowing your body down effectively, you are not resting. When you ignore the signs of fatigue and you push yourself in a workout, that is when injuries occur. You need good sleep, good nutrition and you need to be hydrated otherwise fatigue will be the result.

Little and often.

A good way to avoid injury in the gym is to make sure that you are going to the gym little and often. That’s 30 to 45 minute workouts two to three times a week. Doing two big workouts of a couple of hours at a time actually increases your rate of injury because you are not going to be sufficiently warmed up between workouts.

Make sure that you rest.

An excellent way to avoid injury is to make sure you are resting your muscles and your joints in between workouts. It’s nice to go hard and build your physique, but there’s no use in having a physique you can’t use because you keep injuring it.