1. Little or no stretching

This point cannot be emphasized enough. One of the surest ways to get yourself hurt in the gym is to skip stretching before a workout. Get to the gym a few minutes early and put in the stretching routine before you start exercising. It is better to spend a few extra minutes each day than pull a muscle and be rendered unable to work out for weeks.

2. Misunderstanding “The Burn”

There is a lot of truth to the old adage of “no pain, no gain”. However, a lot of people misunderstand how this relates to exercise and end up hurting themselves. If you do all your exercises with the correct form, you should feel a “burn” in that the muscles you are exercising fill up with lactic acid. Most people mistake any form of pain in the gym for a burn. If you are doing the exercise wrong, it is going to hurt you, and it won’t be because of the “burn”.

3. Exerting yourself beyond your limits

So your workout partner managed to crank out 25 repetitions on the last set of squats? Good for him. It doesn’t mean that you have to beat his score at the cost of seriously injuring yourself. As long as you train your muscles to failure, you are giving them enough reason to grow. You do not need to exert yourself to unrealistic limits just to show off.

4. Doing unfamiliar exercises out of curiosity

A lot of people make this mistake in the gym. They see an experienced lifter or a strong guy use a new machine or perform a deadlift and they want to do it too. It is very easy to injure yourself while doing an exercise or using a machine that you are unfamiliar with. Always consult the resident trainer before you attempt something like this.

5. Underestimating the value of a cool down

A lot of people do not understand the importance of a cool down routine after your workout. After heavy physical activity, your joints and muscles are under a lot of stress. You should factor a cool down period into your workouts. After you finish exercising, spend 5 to 10 minutes doing some light yoga or stretching. This will help your body greatly and will avoid any DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Syndrome) as a result of working out.

In summation, while being enthusiastic about your fitness is great, it shouldn’t come at the cost of your health. Factoring the above points into your workouts will help you avoid any unnecessary injuries at the gym.

In the beginning when we start going to the gym, you might prefer just to have a handful of exercises and become familiar and comfortable doing them. After all, you want to perform each exercise in the right way so that you don’t risk any torn or damaged muscles. This is why it can be so helpful to have a personal trainer too with you in the beginning. Of course, having a personal trainer gives you a lot more motivation as well which can be extremely helpful when we’re starting out.

Some people prefer to try out a whole range of different exercises right of the bat and in this way, find those that they prefer.

This is nothing I recommend, even though I know that some people like the variety and feels it makes the training more fun and entertaining. But, if you want to really get the most out of your training your better off doing fewer exercises and to do them properly. As time goes by and you get more experienced, you’ll be able to add more specific exercises.

The advantage of having only a few exercises in the beginning is that you’ll learn how to do each one of them better and it’s also easier to keep track of your progress. If you have a lot of different exercises you might forget how much you were lifting last time and you might not be able to know how much more you should add to your weights etc. A training log, which is something I highly recommend, easily takes care of this issue.

It’s best is to see your training as a learning curve. Allow it to unfold and don’t expect to be a master straight away. Luckily there are lots of people that have more experience than you and those are the ones you want to learn from.

My favorite exercises came to me with time and a lot of them I got recommended by my personal trainer and others around me who knew more than me. Then I integrated them into my training routine and found out how it suited me to work with them. Experiment and let the process come naturally and you’ll do great.

[TAG-Tec]muscles[/TAG-Tec] [TAG-Tec]excercise[/TAG-Tec]