Preventing Injury While Core Strength Training
If you’re an avid exerciser, you might have experienced sore muscles, aching joints, and sometimes a stiff back. If you do regular Core Strength Training in conjunction with a full bodybuilding workout, you might have felt these symptoms in the past. Injuries are usually due to an excess of stress on the body and improper form. Injuries are harmful to your exercise regimen. When you’re injured, you’re often forced to skip workouts all together. Injuries also can disrupt your sleep, and cause you pain when you’re on the job. You need to know the symptoms to prevent making the injury worse.
Muscle strain occurs when you over-stretch or overuse a muscle. When doing your core strength training, you must be sure to stretch appropriately and do a safe number of repetitions. You might also experience neck strain, though this is less common in Core Strength Training. Back strain is common if you’re not performing the exercises with correct form. When doing lunges, if you do not maintain correct form, you may experience knee strain or sprains. You’ll recognize knee strain if you feel pain behind or below the knee joint. If you have delayed muscle soreness occurring between 24 and 48 hours and disappearing by 72, then you’ve probably experienced micro-tears in the muscle or build-up of lactic acid.
The name of the game is to perform your Core Strength Training exercises with smarts. Forget the old adage ‘No pain, no gain’ – it won’t benefit you here! Preventing injury starts with preparing for the workout appropriately.
Begin with a warm-up. Walk on the treadmill for 5 – 10 minutes to get your muscles warmed up. Once finished with your warm-up, start stretching the areas you’ll be working out. When stretching, hold the position for 30 seconds up to a minute. Keep focused when working out. Though it seems a simple piece of advice, it does need to be said! It’s easy to get caught up in conversation with your workout partners. With greater distraction, the form suffers, and the chance for injury increases. Make sure your diet has adequate nutrition – particularly protein – which will help build and tone muscle fiber.
If injured, follow this wise advice. Don’t hesitate to see a doctor if things don’t seem to be improving. If the pain from the injury persists despite you resting the muscle, consider having the injury evaluated. Protect the injury as much as possible by avoiding using the muscle too much. Use your common sense and listen to your body, most of all!
Kyle loves watching various Olympic Sports including fencing and finds most of his fencing news at www.fencing.net/
