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How to Avoid Injury Whilst Strength Training

Steps to help you Avoid Injury Whilst Strength Training

If you want to make regular, unhindered progress in the gym it’s vital you avoid injury whilst strength training.

I’ve suffered plenty of injuries throughout the time I’ve been lifting weights – almost all of them were unavoidable if I’d been either better informed or more patient. Having gone through the pain, I can now share the things I’ve learned with you all, so you can avoid making the mistakes I made.

By the way, this is the second part of my series on strength training. The first part can be found here.

How to Avoid Injury Whilst Strength Training

avoid injury whilst strength training

1. Balance your strength training programme.

When I first started lifting weights, I did what every new lifter did – focus on the beach muscles. My training programmes included chest and bicep exercises and not much else. Because, well, beach muscles.

You get away with that kind of programming for a long time when you’re young – I did for years, then in my late 20’s those early days caught up with me. Tight thoracic spine, sore shoulders and slight scoliosis in my lumbar spine.

It cost me a lot of money and caused me a lot of pain at the hands of a physio to get that put right.

Now of course it’s all something that can be chalked up to experience and I certainly won’t be making that mistake again, so learn from my mistakes and avoid injury during strength training by making sure your strength training is balanced…

  • If you perform a push movement, do at least 2 pulling movements.
  • Train your posterior chain (calves, hamstrings, glutes, back etc)
  • Train in rotational movements as well.
  • Stretch.
  • Don’t ignore leg training.

If you’re young or new to training, get your strength training programming right from the start and you’ll avoid a lot of unnecessary problems later on in your lifting career.

2. Understand your body and it’s tolerances.

According to the former US Olympic Team Gymnastics coach, Christopher Sommer, connective tissue (tendons and ligaments) takes longer to adapt to training than muscle tissue (makes sense physiologically due to the poorer blood supply, but I hadn’t ever put two and two together!) This means although our muscles may feel good and recovered, we have to balance training loads to accommodate the slower recovery from our connective tissues.

Sommer says their research shows it takes around 30 days to see physiological adaption in muscle tissue, but 210 days to see adaptions in connective tissues, so for at least the first 7 months of your strength training programme, be careful.

I suffered from connective tissue problems a lot at the start – my elbows and wrists would often struggle if I did any Olympic Weightlifting more than twice per week, purely because although my muscles were recovered, my connective tissues hadn’t.

I now get around it by doing some extra recovery work – I foam roll like a mad man, I stretch more than I ever have done before and I mix up my training to allow breaks.

I’ve also started using the sauna again, which I feel helps my recovery a lot.

3. Use the correct strength training equipment.

I’ve said this before – we buy clothes and shoes that are fit for purpose in all other walks of life, but for some reason people often ignore the need for quality gym gear.

You wouldn’t play tennis in football boots, so why are you lifting weights in running shoes?

I wear Adidas Power Perfect 2 shoes, which have a perfectly flat sole, a slightly elevated heel to allow for improved squat depth and a hard midsole to prevent a loss of power when pushing up from the bottom of the squat.

If you intend to squat often, the correct shoes are a really worthwhile investment.

Following on from my point about connective tissue problems, I wanted extra wrist support whilst performing the Olympic lifts, so I bought a pair of these simple RDX wrist wraps. It’s been a fantastic use of a fiver. They’re supportive without being restrictive.

I’ve noticed more people wearing them in the gym now as they push their boundaries. It’s not a way to hide shit form, nor are they going to excuse you from your necessary wrist mobility work, but they certainly help.

If you want to avoid injury whilst strength training, using the correct equipment is a big help.

4. Warm up properly for strength training.

I’ve written before about warm ups, but they are exercise and workout specific. The warm up I do for my strength training, particularly if I’m doing Olympic lifts involves much more specific joint mobilisation. I don’t follow all of the exercises in the video below, but this is the kind of warm up you should be doing…

You may wonder why I’ve shared a video where I don’t do all of the exercises?

The reason is because mobility is individual, so I spend extra time mobilising the joints where I’m particularly stiff. For me, it’s my shoulders, hips and wrists so I spend extra time working on stretching those areas. I have personal training clients who are stiff in their lower back or suffer with knee issues, so we spend more time there.

The important thing is you do some sort of dynamic movement to improve blood flow, then mobilise the joints you are about to use. Be thorough though – it’s better to spend time on your warm up and prevent injury in the session.

To avoid injury whilst strength training, warm up with a purpose of preparing your body for what it’s about to go through. A five minute stationary bike warm up just isn’t going to be enough.

5. Lift appropriately.

One of my biggest weaknesses is impatience. I want to be stronger, but forget that these things take time. I have to remind myself I’m not going be making the strength jumps that I did as a beginner, where I could double my lifts in the space of a few weeks.

It’s the thin end of the wedge syndrome – the more advanced you are, the harder it is to make progress. Where there is still plenty of improvement mileage left in me, I have to be realistic that I won’t be making the improvements I once did.

My impatience has led me to expecting too much of myself and lifting weights that hinder my development because they don’t allow me to perfect technique.

I’ll explain…

We should spend most of our time in the gym lifting ‘working’ weights (weights you can lift well with good technique). Here’s why…

Good technique, practiced often = improved consistency.

When your technique is consistently good, add weight and make strength gains.

Strength gains made with good technique = strong, injury-free lifter.

What I’ve been guilty of in the past is trying to make strength gains before technique improvements, so I’ve been lifting heavy weights too quickly, with questionable (not dangerous, just not textbook) technique.

Whilst this won’t really do me any harm, it’s short-term thinking in terms of a strength improvement, because eventually a moderately strong lifter with good technique will consistently out-lift a strong lifter with bad technique.

At the start, I’d lift beyond my capabilities to recover, which would cause niggly injuries that I should have been able to avoid. If you want to avoid injury whilst strength training, lift appropriately.

Get the technique right from the start and you’ll make long term strength gains and avoid many unnecessary injuries.

6. Eat the right foods for performance and recovery.

Apart from the obvious body fat benefits, eating good quality, nutritious food is linked with tissue health and quality. In fact, when I was interviewing Matt Lovell, the nutritionist for UK Athletics, Man City, Tottenham Hotspur etc, he mentioned there is an anecdotal link between high sugar diets and injury rates.

He also noted that when people come off high sugar diets, their soft tissue injury rates decline.

When strength training with a degree of intensity, you want every possible advantage working for you. If something as simple as your diet can help prevent a potential injury, it makes sense to go with it.

Base your diet around high levels of good quality protein, a dose of clean carbohydrates (rice, potatoes) relative to your activity levels (more activity = more carbs) and plenty of fruit and vegetables.

Maintain a good level of hydration by drinking over 2 litres of water per day and you’re all set. Muscle is mostly water and when I was having physiotherapy treatment, the physio said a lot of his patients suffered from poor tissue health because they were dehydrated, which makes sense. You can potentially avoid injury whilst strength training by eating well and staying topped up with water.

I also use Athletic Greens and fish oil to make up for any low intake of minerals through my normal diet.

7. Get Plenty of Rest.

It’s been said plenty of times before, but knowing when and how to rest is vital for your longevity when it comes to avoiding injury whilst strength training.

Strength training involves pushing your body to a limit every session. There’s only so often you can do that before you break down, so you need to take regular breaks. Personally, I’ll only do some really heavy lifting twice per week. I train 4-5 times per week, but only 2 of those will be really heavy.

As I mentioned in point number 4, you have to lift appropriately. If you don’t, you’ll struggle to maintain a level of training and performance that allow you to avoid injury whilst strength training and consistently make progress.

Yes, hard training is where the strength gains come from, but if you spend weeks at a time injured, you’ll be making far slower progress and training a whole lot less effectively.

Use these tips to avoid injury whilst strength training and you’ll make real strength, fitness and health gains without the down sides. I personally employ all of these methods in my strength training because over the years I’ve suffered more injuries than necessary. Don’t make the same mistakes I did and follow this advice!

If you want to read part one of my series on effective strength training, click here.

P.S. I’m giving away a FREE eBook ‘101 Health and Fitness Tips’ to everyone who subscribes to my VIP email list. By joining the list you’ll have access to exclusive content, discounts, offers and products from both me and selected partners. Click here to download!free health and fitness ebook

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HoylesFitness

Owner of www.hoylesfitness.com. Personal Trainer, Father and fitness copy writer. Working hard making the world fitter and healthier!

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