Getting injured is a constant concern for all athletes and fitness enthusiasts. Pushing your body too hard can be easier than expected, and often doesn’t even come from overexertion. Most sports injuries are caused by external factors, usually other players, and weather and surface conditions. Whether it’s getting tackled in football, not noticing a pothole on a run, or trying to lift too much weight, almost every sport has the potential for injury.
How can you stay healthy and avoid serious injuries that may need surgery or stop an athletic career? How can you avoid long term injury that may inhibit your lifestyle in the long run? Here are some tips and suggestions on how to keep the body going without it breaking down in the end.
Warming Up
Warming up is one of the simplest but also one of the most effective ways to prevent injury. Stretching your muscles and doing some light exercises beforehand gives your body a better chance to handle strenuous work. Stretching and warmup exercises gets the blood pumping and activates the muscles without wasting energy.
Rotating muscle groups with workouts is also a great way to prevent injury. Adding variety to your workouts gives your muscles a chance to rest and recover. Rotating muscle groups also builds muscle more evenly, which prevents injury on its own. Focusing too hard on one muscle group and neglecting others will lead to misjudging how strong other parts of the body are. For example, working too hard on arms/upper body without working on legs and core will severely limit your ability to judge how much you can lift. As well, overworking parts of the body will eventually lead to strains, pulls and tears unless you rotate the types of workouts and body groups.
Be sure to rotate exercise types as well (aerobic, anaerobic, strength, light) to keep your mind and body in great shape. Redundant exercises will eventually cause mental fatigue, which will limit your body’s ability to recover. A healthy mind creates a healthy body, but a healthy body doesn’t always create a healthy mind. Workout variety will also engage the muscles in different ways, building strength, endurance, and mass.
Getting Rest
Training requires planning, patience, and diligence. Your expectations need to be realistic, and your goals should be progressive. Trying to do “too much, too soon” can be the number one reason why injuries occur. Building your routine around your current abilities and then adding more intensity as your body grows is the smartest way to train.
Listen to your body with rest and recovery. Exercising causes microtears in your muscles, which are necessary for growth. Without proper rest, and recovery, the muscles won’t be able to repair the microtears and won’t grow. The best way to stay injury free is to listen to your body and avoid pushing too far. Overuse injuries are very common and if you feel like you need to rest or slow down you should. Pushing hard is important but knowing when you are able to go harder and when you should take a break is really important. A day off to relax and rest will not kill a whole training schedule, but it may help to avoid prolonged injuries.
How to Treat Injuries
Despite how hard you try, sometimes injuries just happen. Uneven pavement, sharp corners, and missing a step can easily cause some injuries even when you aren’t training. Having a fully stocked first aid kit or cabinet is a great way to treat these types of injuries, and even some types of sports injuries. E-FirstAidSupplies has multiple different types of tape and pre-wrap so you can treat your sprains.
Athletic tape is an adhesive strip of a cloth blend with a high tensile strength. The main purposes of athletic tape are to help support injured joints and to help keep dressings and bandages secured on wounds. The high tensile strength of athletic tape lets you provide support to an injured joint without the tape tearing from movement. Pre-wrap is very useful when you’ve sustained a fairly serious injury and need to wear athletic tape for extended periods of time or are repeatedly removing and reapplying the tape. Most athletic tapes are nonporous, so they will trap sweat against the skin, which causes the skin to wrinkle and become irritated. Pre-wrap lets the skin breathe and wicks away the sweat, providing comfort.
Hot and cold compresses are also very effective at treating sports injuries without having to rely on medicine. These packs enable the body’s natural healing process by affecting blood-flow and nerve activity.
