Lift Weights the Right Way & Avoid Injury

Proper weightlifting techniques and protocols are necessary to avoid injury and being laid up out of training. Unfortunately, even the best intentions sometimes still can’t help someone avoid injury and so we see them in our practice seeking our many treatment options to get out of pain, into recovery and ultimately back in the gym. Sometimes, as advanced as many lifters might be, a quick look at the basics never does any harm. These basics are vital for young or experienced lifters to know and understand anyway.

Let’s check these basics out here and help you avoid injury and pain.

Proper Lifting Technique

If your stance is wrong, if your lifting process is wrong, you will likely be injured. Obviously if you are starting out in lifting weights, a coach is essential to teach you all this. If you are more experienced, it can never hurt to get a coach yourself to identify any bad habits that might have crept into your process.

Practice Your Technique

With no weights, it’s a good idea to practice your stance and process without any weights in order to perfect it before undertaking any kind of load. Get this right before doing anything else.

Strength Training

Keep yourself in good shape away from lifting. A good exercise for this is a couple of sets of 8 to 15 repetitions a few times a week. Also a general strengthening program is good to do to apply to all the major muscle groups. Some aerobic training is good to do as well.

Warming Up & Down

You should spend a good 15 minutes both in warming up and cooling down to reduce the risk of injury.

Rest

It is easy to overdo things, but adequate rest is vital to any exercise so take the time to have a day or two at least off to give your body the rest it deserves. Overdoing it will lead to injury.

Things Not to Do

No powerlfting or body building if you are too young. Allow your body to mature first.

No performance enhancing substances.

If your medical history has shown any kind of heart condition or serious conditions, check with your primary doctor before doing any weight lifting.

Things to Do

Drink plenty of water to avoid de-hydration.

If you feel any pain while training, stop what you are doing. No pain, no gain in this instance is not good, particularly if the pain continues. This is where you will need us, we can help treat your injury with any of our collaborative care therapies. Most importantly, we will help you heal the right way, tailor make any plans that suit your condition to help you recover and train appropriately until you are back to full fitness.

That is what we do, and our expert sports doctor has treated the Men’s Olympic Bobsleigh team to help these athletes with injuries and help them through the appropriate training to get back to full fitness. Our expertise in sports medicine is second to none and we will be able to help you get back to where you want to be.

So any pain, any injuries, come and see us.

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