5 Most Common Fitness Injuries and How to Prevent Them
Whether you are training in the gym, running in the park or following a workout DVD at home, injuries can happen. There are some that are more common than others, usually due to people not warming up correctly or attempting to do more than they can. It is important to know what the top 5 injuries are and the best way to avoid them occurring.
Sprained Ankles
People spend a lot of their time sitting or walking with shoes that have little support. Their ankles have not gained the strength to do all of the exercise that they want to do, especially when running in the park. Sprained and twisted ankles are among the most common, especially for runners, dancers and walkers.
While it is impossible to completely prevent sprained ankles, it is possible to prevent some cases. Wear running that offer good support for your ankles and build your training up. Also, make sure you look ahead on the road to watch out for any potholes and bumps.
Sprained or Twisted Knees
Like with the ankles, our daily lives do not help to support our hips, which leads to knee injuries. Also, some forms of exercise are worse for the knees than others. Those who train on treadmills on a regular basis or run will find that their knees become sore because of the pressure placed on them.
Change your workout on a regular basis to avoid knee injuries. Avoid running too much and look at other cardiovascular workouts such as swimming and rowing where your knees will have more support.
Lower Back Pain
Injuries to the lower back come third. These are mainly due to people not realizing that they need to strengthen their lower back. The muscles become weaker and this leads to muscles pulling during training.
It is important to find exercises to strengthen the lower back, especially if you concentrate a lot on your stomach muscles. This will help to improve your posture. You should also avoid overtraining to give your body the chance to recover.
Injury to the Shoulders
Swimmers, dancers and rowers tend to suffer from problems with their shoulders. So do those who life weights on a regular basis. This is due to the repetitive motion that is experienced while training or the excess weight for weight training.
If you do weight training, you should slowly build up your endurance for larger weights. This will give your muscles the chance to build and get used to the training. For those who swim or do cardio workouts that involve shoulder movements, look at switching with others or make sure that you warm up and cool down at the beginning and end of your workouts.
Necks and Upper Back Tension
While this is not really an injury, tension in the neck and upper back do prevent you from doing exercise. This is partially to do with posture and partially to do with the type of exercise that you will do.
When you are sitting, make sure that you do not slouch. Sit upright with both feet flat on the floor. You should also get up and move around regularly. Avoid tensing your neck and upper back while doing any form of exercise as this just leads to more tension.
Building up your workouts is extremely important to avoid any type of injury while exercising. This will help your body to build up endurance and will avoid overtraining. Slowly building up your workouts will also avoid getting ill, which pushes your training back while you recover.
