Prevent Exercise Injury & Illness

Exercise can’t hurt you, can it? If you don’t do it right or you overdo it, yes it can hurt you. Exercise injury can be painful and delay reaching your fitness goals. Always keep safety in mind when exercising. Before trying a new exercise, make sure you know how to perform the exercise to avoid injury. If an exercise move hurts, then you are doing it wrong. Exercise should not cause pain. A fitness trainer can instruct you about how to do exercises the correct way so that you avoid injury and pain. 

Start your exercise routine slowly and work up to a more strenuous level of exercise. Warm up before exercise and stretch your muscles before you begin. Warming up will prepare your muscles and joints for exercise, which can help reduce the risk of a sprain or torn muscle. Stop exercising immediately if you feel pain. Muscle soreness is common following intense exercise of trying a new exercise, but pain during exercise or soreness that does not subside in a couple of days after exercise may indicate an injury. Overuse injuries result from doing too much exercise for one or two muscle groups. Tennis elbow, for example, results from over-using the muscles in the arm, which can lead to inflammation and soreness. Spot training too frequently can lead to over-use injury. Train a different muscle group every day if you are lifting weights. Alternate running with swimming or bicycling to help avoid over-use injury. 

Remember to drink plenty of water to avoid dehydration. Dehydration occurs when you lose more water by sweating than you drink. Avoid strenuous exercise outdoors when the weather is hot. Strenuous exercise outdoors during how weather can increase your risk of dehydration, heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Cold weather outdoor exercise has it risks as well. You can experience exercise-induced asthma, even if you’ve never had asthma before. Vigorous exercise outdoors during cold weather can cause a bout of exercise-induced asthma. The symptoms include shortness of breath, wheezing, coughing and tightness in the chest. Symptoms begin within a few minutes after exercise and can last for up to 30 minutes.