Three Things You Must Do To Prevent Over-Use Injuries

Three Things You Must Do To Prevent Over-Use Injuries

One of the most important things that you should be doing as you go about your workout plan is aiming to prevent injuries from occurring.  Injuries are the fastest way to kill any progress dead in its tracks and often come about for the silliest reasons.

Overuse injuries in particular are the form of injury that you can definitely prevent as long as you’re smart with how you go about your workouts.

Taking a few steps to really safeguard against injuries will be vital to your long-term success. If you end up sidelined, you’ll definitely not be moving in the direction you want to go. 

Let’s have a look at what you should consider.

Change Up Your Cardio Mode

The very first thing that you can do to prevent overuse injuries from occurring is to make sure that you change up your mode of cardio from time to time.

Cardio training is what most often brings about overuse injuries because you’re doing the same action over and over and over again.

Running is especially bad for this so if you’re an avid runner, you may want to consider cycling or using the cross trainer once in a while instead.

Not only will changing it up help to prevent overuse injuries, but it will also help to stimulate your muscles in a new manner and bring about faster overall results.

Make Sure You Get Good Rest Each Week

Second, the next thing that you must make sure you’re doing is getting enough rest each week.  Overuse injuries are far more likely to occur if you’re suffering from overtraining as well, so it’s critical to have that down time scheduled in.

You should ideally be taking at least one day off each and every week and then also incorporating a few lighter days into the mix as well.

If you are well rested going into each workout session, you’ll be more mindful of your form as well and the muscles and joints won’t be as stressed as they otherwise would be.

One day off is an absolute must to keep your body feeling fresh at all times.

Don’t Train Too Fatigued

Finally, the last important thing that you should be doing to help prevent over-use injuries is to make sure that you aren’t training when you’re too fatigued.

Training in a fatigued state is especially dangerous because you are much more likely to get sloppy with your form.

In terms of overuse injuries, this will be even worse because if you’re doing an exercise variation that is extremely repetitive, the chances of getting sloppy are that much more likely.

While it’s good to push through a workout through light fatigue as everyone does have those days where they just don’t feel like it, avoid training when you’re incredibly tired and should just take the day off to rest.

There’s a big difference between slight fatigue and feeling very exhausted so make sure that you know and understand this.

So there you have the top tips to remember to prevent over-use injuries.  If you ensure you incorporate these into your approach, you can be sure to stay injury free for the coming months ahead.