How to Avoid Exercise Injuries

Exercise injuries are incredibly common but largely avoidable. By listening to your unique body and respecting your needs, you can avoid exercise related accidents. Have you ever pushed through a run even though your ankle really hurt? Or ignored that deep, nagging pain in your hips that’s been going on for months? Pushing through and ignoring your body almost always does more harm than good, and often leads to injury. 

There are ways that you can avoid getting injured and not being able to hit your goals. Follow these 10 steps to avoid injury and stay strong and healthy so you can keep working out and feeling great:

1. If you’re in serious pain, don’t force yourself to work out anyway.  Muscling through will do much more harm than good.
2. Take at least one day off from exercise per week.  This is preventative. If you give your muscles one day of complete rest to repair and rebuild, you’ll reduce the risk of injury.
3. Stretch before and after you exercise.  Imagine a frozen rubber band. It would snap if you pulled it right? Now imagine a room temperature or warm rubber band. It can stretch far before breaking. Your muscles are the same. You need to warm up and stretch them out before you dive into vigorous exercise.
4. Do yoga to complement other forms of exercise.  Yoga balances running, swimming, biking, and other vigorous forms of exercise. It releases muscle and fascia tension, so you can train harder and get stronger without injuring yourself.
5. Maintain bone health through diet.  Weak, brittle bones leave you prone to injury, especially with natural aging. By eating plenty of calcium from green vegetables, small fish like sardines, and much more you’ll maintain strong bones and protect yourself from injury.
6. Fuel properly.  Your body needs raw materials to function. Protein, carbs, and fat are the building blocks that make up every cell, bone, and muscle in your body. Especially if you work out vigorously, you need to maintain a proper diet with adequate calories and nutrients to stay strong and reduce the risk of injury.
7. Take Epsom salt baths.  Epsom salts have magnesium that helps relax stiff sore muscles and can be used to relieve muscle tension and soreness. When your muscles are flexible and loose you’re more resilient to injury.
8. Reduce stress.  When you’re stressed, your natural immunity and strength are decreased and you’re more likely to get injured. Stress also influences your brain, and makes you feel scattered and distracted. In that state, you’re more likely to get injured as you won’t have your full attention on the exercise you’re doing. For example, you might trip over something and injure yourself while running.
9. Get chiropractic adjustments.  Getting frequent adjustments keeps your body in alignment and reduces chronic pain and tension, making you stronger and better able to handle intense exercise without getting extremely sore, or worse, injured.
10. If you’re in chronic pain, get it checked out sooner rather than later.  If you’ve been experiencing low-grade pain for a while but have brushed it off as nothing, it could be something serious. Have it checked out just to be sure.

Want to get even healthier? As you can see, there are a lot of great steps you can take to protect your body from injury. How many of these steps are you already doing, and what could you add in to make yourself a little bit more bulletproof against injury? Want help figuring out how to fit exercise into your daily routine safely? Curious about how health coaching can help you make your own healthy changes? Let’s talk! Schedule an initial complimentary consultation with me today—or pass this offer on to someone you care about! Visit www.noshoesnutrition.com and sign up for a FREE consultation.  I work with people from all over the world individually or in groups so don’t let anything hold you back!