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Tips for Weight Training: Avoiding Injuries     
 
Fitness
  
 
The fact is that if you want to be big, you have to train big. If you just go to the gym and go through the motions, you won’t get the job done.
It’s all about overloading your muscles with heavy weights and intensity to get real results. If you don’t give your muscles a good reason to grow by taking advantage of their natural adaptive survival response, they won’t.

Even though hard and heavy training might be good for your muscles, remember that it can spell trouble for the health of your connective tissue and joints. This is simply the reality of intense weight training, and while there are no guarantees that you will be able to completely avoid getting injured, you can certainly take specific steps to lessen the chance.

You do not want to get an injury-it will stop you cold in your muscle-building tracks. Lower your risk of injury with my 5 golden tips for weight training given below.

1) Don’t skip your warm-up!

This simple 15–20 minute process will prepare your mind and body for the hard work to come, by increasing blood flow into the surrounding connective tissue and by lubricating your joints.

Do 5 minutes of light cardiovascular exercise before each workout, and then 4–5 warm-up sets for the first major exercise of the routine.

2) Proper form is essential.

Every exercise that you perform in the gym should be done with proper form and technique in order to keep the stress off your joints.

Getting hurt is almost guaranteed if you begin deadlifting or squatting with a rounded back, jerking weights around in a crazy manner, or doing dangerous exercises.

3) You have to train within your limits.

If you start comparing yourself to someone else you’re just looking for trouble because weightlifting is a personal battle. The guy next to you has nothing to do with your training program, so how does it matter what he’s benching?

You must always use weights that you can handle and control with proper form, and if you start piling on the plates to impress the people around you, you’ll be stretching your limits and putting yourself in a very vulnerable position.

4) Always know when to quit.

Without a doubt, this is one of those tips for weight training you need to listen to. If you cannot complete another rep of an exercise using proper form, the set is over, plain and simple.

Lay down the weight and gear up for your next set. Using jerky movements and lots of momentum to perform some extra reps is a surefire recipe for disaster.

5) If you feel aches and pains, don’t ignore them.

Ignoring something serious is not part of the best tips for weight training, so listen up! The idea of quitting just seems impossible after working through week after week of a weight training program.

On occasion, this drive might encourage us to pretend as if these obvious injuries aren’t really there. It’s not uncommon to make your pain worse.