10 Simple Rules to Reduce Fitness Injury Risks

by Natalia Moore

September 5, 2016

1416

• fitness activity
• injuries

You can reduce the risk of fitness injury by:

Avoiding Activities With an Identified High Incidence of Fitness Injuries

For example, high impact aerobics has a greater incidence of lower body injuries than low impact aerobics; or strength training (high weights and low reps) has a higher incidence of muscle and soft tissue injuries than circuit training (low weights and higher reps).

Avoiding Unsafe Environments for Fitness

If you walk into a weights gym that looks untidy or if some of the equipment is out of order or “sticky”, then you would be reluctant to train there as the poor state of the equipment indicates that the gym supervisors don’t care about equipment maintenance.

Resistance training involves reasonably large stresses on the machines used, you don’t want machines to break when you’re using them. You’d avoid going out for a run of the temperature was above 28°C and the humidity was above 80 percent, as you’d be risking overheating.

Seeking Out an Educated, Competent, Up-to-Date Fitness Instructors

who are prepared to get personally involved in helping you define your fitness goals, and assist you in pursuing specific activities that will push you in the right direction for achieving your goals.

Knowing Your Current Limits

Work right to the edge of your limits, but don’t exceed your body’s ability to undertake work, recover from that work, and make adaptations that reduce the stress and strain of the activity. Fitness is specific to specific muscles, joints, bones, and soft tissues.

You can be fit in many areas, such as flexibility, strength, endurance, agility, skill, balance, and coordination. Your level of fitness in each of these areas is constantly changing as your body adapts to new activities, and de-adapts from activities that you are de-emphasizing.

Getting Educated About the Latest Fitness Information…

…the way your body works, and the best ways for you to get fit without getting injured.

Avoiding Competition With Others When Exercising

Competition has a place in sport, when you are undertaking activities that you have trained for over time. Competition is not good when you are trying to maximize your benefits of a workout, as exercise intensity will always increase when competition appears.

You may end up wasting an exercise session by working at too high intensity, or you may injure yourself and lose days, weeks, or months of exercise time. It’s your workout, not someone else’s, so concentrate in what you are doing.

If Safety Equipment Is Recommended, Use It

As a minimum, wear suitable footwear to your exercise sessions.

Take as Much Time as You Require…

…to allow your body to adapt to new strain, or repetitive stresses.

Stay Flexible

Always, Prepare Your Body Before Exercise and Recover It After Exercise

If you do get injured, spend the necessary time rehabilitating that injury before subjecting your body to the activity that caused the injury.

Fitness is a very safe activity, as long as you follow these simple rules. Lastly, keep in mind the difference between health and fitness. Health is the absence of disease, injury, or illness while fitness is your ability to work or your standard of performance in a particular task.

Someone who attends 10 to 15 aerobics classes every week may have great aerobic fitness, but may have very poor health as they are suffering from shin splints, low ferritin levels, low white blood cell count, sacroiliac joint inflammation, metatarsalgia, and plantar fascitis.

On the other hand, someone who never exercises may not be particularly fit. But they will be very healthy if they have a good diet, low stress levels, low levels of body fat and an active life.