How to Prevent Injury With Resistance Training and Stretching

Why do injuries occur? Injury is usually the result of poor flexibility and strength along with inadequate warm-up and exercise technique. Torn muscles and ligaments are two of the most popular nagging injuries. This is because of the fact that most people don’t take the necessary precautions to warming up correctly to get an adequate supply of oxygen to muscles before exercising. The younger you are the more you can get away with – but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take some precautionary measures to prevent injury.
The best way to help prevent injury is to develop strength and flexibility through stretching and resistance training. Both are equally important and I want to emphasize the importance of them both.

Here are some general guidelines for beginners to follow:

• Resistance band exercises are easier and more flexible than using weights. Your weight lifting routine will benefit from adding at least one resistance band exercise.
• Never go over 45 min. with workouts. This will keep you refreshed and allow you time to recover as well. Training with a high intensity will achieve faster results; however overtraining may lead to an injury.
• Keep movements controlled even when going heavy or training for power. You want to make sure that your body is in the right form so that you don’t incur another injury!
• Use compound movements that utilize multiple muscle groups. This allows you to get more for your time and train more muscle groups to prevent imbalances. For example, you can do resistance band squats, pull-ups, dips; push-ups; bench press, and standing calf raises.
• Do a 5 min. warm down to flush your muscles of toxins. You can walk or even spin your bike on rollers.

Stretching

• Isometric stretching may not be the best style but it is the easiest and quite effective if done correctly.
• Stretch till you feel slight pull and hold 20-30 sec.
• Don’t stretch till it becomes painful, again you don’t want to incur another injury.
• Don’t bounce! You can tear or pull something by causing opposing reflexes to operate. When a muscle over stretches, a reflex goes off causing the the muscle to forcefully contract, which can cause microtears.