Exercise is a big part of a healthy lifestyle. If you exercise regularly, you help to keep your heart rate and blood pressure at a healthy level, as well as keep your muscles strong and supple, and you can even make yourself feel great mentally too! However, exercise can sometimes cause more problems than it solves, thanks to just how likely you are to injure yourself when going about a workout routine.
Most people make mistakes early on in their workout life, and then level out as they get used to exercising and reaching different intensities. Indeed, a lot of people think it’s normal for exercise to hurt – no pain no gain, right? But when a workout routine hurts you, not only does it stop you from physically carrying on, but it can turn you off mentally as well, which is what causes the real damage.
So, whether you’re looking to start a new routine, or get back into one after an injury, it’s important to know how to workout without hampering yourself. You don’t want to send yourself back to square one, nor have to sit out the next few days because you’ve pulled a hamstring! And there are many ways you can learn how to exercise without injuring yourself, and it just so happens we’ve listed them below for you.
A Proper Warm Up is Essential
Warm ups will always be the best way to prevent pain from occurring, as they’re a big part of any workout routine for a reason! And yet, a warm up can often be treated as an offhand, second-class part of the routine. After all, you’re just stretching a bit and doing some simple movements – what could possibly be the benefit?
Well, without a warm up, you’re going to be taking a relatively stiff and unready body straight into a ‘high intensity’ (even if it’s not!) workout. A warm up helps you to get the body flowing, and literally warm your body up ready to get the heart racing. You’ve got to feel the pounding in your chest in order to lose weight, and it can be very dangerous to go straight from a resting rate to one that reaches over 100bpm.
Take an elastic band as a good example here – it won’t stretch to the maximum straight away, but if you stretch it progressively over time, it’ll soon be there! So take 10 minutes to warm up, steadily increasing your heart rate, and then move into your actual routine.
Then Master the Cool Down
Just as a warm up gets you ready to work out, a cool down allows you to calm your heart, and your sweat rate, and get back into your normal day to day again. Your blood pressure and heart rate will slowly come down and return to a stable level, and you’ll feel like you can breathe normally again. Now that’s crucial for helping you to stay physically healthy when committing to a fitness routine.
A cool down also helps muscles to stay supple – lactic acid can build up otherwise, which is what causes the morning after stiffness, and even potential cramping. You can even feel lightheaded and potentially feel the blood rushing to your head without cooling down, especially after a HIIT circuit or a lengthy day of training. That’s bad for your heart health, and can cause issues if performed in the long term.
Get the Right Equipment
If you’re not wearing or using the right gear and equipment, it’s going to be much easier to hurt yourself than ever before. It’s a simple rule really – without the right clothes or too heavy weights, for example, and then use the wrong technique on top, you’re going to pull or sprain something in 10 minutes max!
So it’s a good idea to eliminate as much risk as possible here, and simply work with the right outfits and/or equipment in the first place. And not to mention, if you buy what you need to from the beginning, you won’t waste any money on your fitness journey. After all, you won’t have to substitute poorly made items for higher quality in a couple months time.
To demonstrate this, think about the jogging lifestyle. If you want to go running more often, it’s a good idea to invest in a pair of running shoes to prevent shin splints. Shin splints refers to the chronic pain you can feel in your shins after moving, and it’s quite common in people exercising for both the first time as well as in the long term. Wearing the right shoes can prevent you from putting too much strain on the wrong part of your leg, and at the very least, can help to reduce the amount of pain you feel as a result.
Don’t Push Yourself Too Hard
Pushing yourself is a big part of exercising to an effective extent. If you start off gently, and then work your way up to a more intensive and/or longer workout routine, you’ll notice bigger, faster results. It’s a natural progression! However, along the way a lot of people can make the mistake of moving on too quickly, and ramping up far more than they should.
Why does this occur? Well, a lot of people like to immediately jump from one extreme to the other as it feels like making progress. Small steps, though the best way forward, can often feel like you’re not doing much. You make these big leaps to try and convince yourself you’re committing to the level you’d really like to. And yet, this can set you back weeks at the least, as it’s too soon for your body to adjust. You’ll have to take more days off, and it’ll be incredibly hard to work through the pain and fatigue.
So take it slow. For example, do a couple weeks of 30-minute mid-intensity exercise, and then do a couple weeks of 40 minutes, and so on and so forth. Take it bit by bit, and get used to each exercise level or length, and then move on. You’ll feel much more secure in yourself this way, and you’ll have a far less chance of waking up completely stiff the next morning!
Take in Plenty of Fluids
Do you drink while you work out? A lot of people forget to, as hard to believe as that is. Even though they fill up a bottle to sip as they run, or they have a glass of water next to them as they do a Yoga routine, they can simply forget to actually take a drink. They’re far too focused on finishing the routine, or hitting their finish line, and staying hydrated goes out of the window.
But drinking is a huge part of staying fit. If you’re not topping up your hydration levels often enough, you can get tired faster, feel like your muscles are burning, and you can lose focus on what you’re doing. And this doesn’t even take into account how much water you’re sweating out as you go!
So simply put, if you want to perform to the best of your ability, you need to drink more! And it’s best to do this throughout the day. Drink from as soon as you wake up to when you go to bed, and you’ll be well equipped for exercising at any point between these two poles. But if you want to focus more on your workout itself, why not set an alarm to remind you to drink? Every 5 minutes have a bell go off to alert you to your hydration level, and then take a couple mouthfuls and move on.
Watch and Learn!
Finally, if you want to start perfecting your form and technique, head onto Youtube and start watching some routines made by the pros. If you’re sick of just reading through directions online, this is the point for you. Get to know what the experts have to say, and follow their advice to better move your body in an effective yet comfortable way. And if you find nothing for you on Youtube, you could also subscribe to some more specialist workout video websites, which you can find a handy list of right here.
After all, visual learning is the most effective way to take something to heart. If you see someone else demonstrate, you’ve got a perfect example to follow, and the movements in your circuit will feel a lot more natural to do. You won’t place a foot wrong or end up twisting a thigh or put a crick in your neck when stretching the wrong way, etc., and that’s invaluable when you want to see some quick results from your workout.
Exercising doesn’t have to hurt. Sure, it can feel like a strain, and it’s supposed to be a challenge, but don’t let yourself live with workout pain for too long. It won’t help you, and it can stop fitness in its tracks.
