Many times we can make different mistakes that can cause us injuries and forces us to put our training aside until we are fully recovered.

Injuries are very common when exercising.  Many times we can make different mistakes that can cause us injuries and forces us to put our training aside until we are fully recovered. For this reason, we must take into account a series of guidelines and basic principles to avoid injuries in the exercises.

1. The first step to strengthen your joints and have your body in tune to start with exercise with a good warm up. This way you will contract the muscles with more speed, power, and efficiency. We should start warming up from the top down, starting from the neck and going down each part of our body ending up this way at the ankles. We must move each of our joints to improve muscle elasticity and tendons.

2. It is important that when we exercise we take into account the limits of our body since each person can reach a particular point and withstand adequate intensity. For this reason, it is important to listen to your body and not force it to do things for which it is not prepared. It is recommended to increase the intensity of the exercises slowly, so the body adapts to it, the training should be progressive and improve every day.

3. Pain is not a symptom of a job well done. Many people think that if there is no pain, there is no development or evolution. Probably you have heard some phrases like “if there is no pain there is no gain” or “pain is your friend”, but it is completely wrong since pain is the way that your body has to warn you that something is not working properly. In the case of sport, when the pain appears we should not continue training since the next step is an injury that can end up in something more serious that will keep us standing for long. So if pain appears, we should stop training.

4. Choosing the best equipment to exercise is important, as it is to choose the best routines and machines to work each of the muscle groups of our body, as this depends on the development of the correct form of the exercises. For example, a bad posture caused by bad equipment or poor posture when doing the exercise will be the trigger for a future injury. Therefore we must always control the position at all times and avoid forcing it with reckless turns.

5. Rest is crucial to keep the muscles and joints in perfect condition; it is essential to recover them to avoid the tensions that can cause injuries. For this reason, you should keep a rest period between the days you are going to train each muscle group, for example, perform four days of exercise and three days of rest, so your muscles and joints don’t end harmed.

6. Train each day a specific muscle group to avoid injuries, this way you will stay active, and you will be doing sport every day, but avoiding always working the same muscle groups.

7. When you are finishing the sessions of your routines, it is important that you reduce the intensity of the exercise gradually. If you stop the exercise abruptly after an intense effort, our heart rate would go sudden from high to low and cause some cardiac abnormalities. It is common that when this happens, some dizziness and even fainting may occur. During this time it is important to do a few minutes of stretching to finish the workout and promote relaxation of muscles.

8. Finally, you can give yourself a gratifying shower of warm water, to completely relax, and it is important that you sleep very well, so your whole body recovers from the physical effort made during the exercise.

It is very important that you are under the supervision of a professional who will provide the best options for you and your body and have an optimum performance.