Exercise is a great way to lose weight, help manage the pain, and improve your overall health. It can also lead to injuries if you don’t perform exercises properly, or overexert yourself.

There are steps you can take to avoid injuring yourself while working out. If you do hurt yourself, try using the Handy Cure therapeutic laser to reduce swelling and promote microcirculation. This will help speed up your recovery time, so you can get back to working out. If you suffer from chronic pain or Fibromyalgia, these tips along with the Handy Cure will also help speed up your recovery time, and lessen the chances of you injuring yourself at the gym.

Keep reading for our tips on how to prevent injuries at the gym.

Workout Injury Prevention Tips

Workout injuries are fairly common, and anyone can experience them no matter what your level of fitness is. The most common gym injuries include sprained ankles, shoulder injuries, pulled or strained muscles, knee injuries, tendinitis, wrist dislocation or sprain, and shin splints. Here are some tips to avoid injuring yourself while exercising.

Stretching: you should stretch both before and after your workout. Stretching not only helps to increase your flexibility but is slowly gets the blood pumping and moving through your muscles. Some people prefer to stretch before their warm-ups, while others prefer to stretch after. Either way, you need to stretch before you start your more intense workout exercises.

Warm-ups and cool-downs: a warm-up helps to get you muscles and joints ready for exercise. Like stretching, it helps get the blood circulating through your muscles and joints, which will help prevent injuries. It also gradually increases your heart rate. Some easy ways to warm up are to jog in place for a few minutes, or jump rope.

Your cool-down occurs after your workout. This is to slowly bring your heart rate back down to a normal pace. A good way to cool-down is to walk for a couple of minutes after your workout until you feel your heart rate go down.

Hydrate: drink lots of water before, during, and after your workout. During your workout, your body will become dehydrated, which not only affect the performance of your workout, but it can lead to serious injuries as well. Drinking enough water is important to avoid weakness, dizziness, exhaustion, and allows you to keep sweating. It’s recommended to drink 8 ounces every 20-30 minutes before you start working out, every 10-20 minutes while working out, and then within 30 minutes of finishing your workout.

Listen to your body: if you start feeling pain, stop working out. Pushing yourself to the point of pain means you’re putting too much stress on your body. Either slow down or stop that exercise for the day.

Slow start: easing your way into your workout is an easy way to avoid injuries. When you start a new exercise, start slowly and build up your intensity as you go. If you plan to increase the frequency and duration of that exercise, it's also a good idea to start slowly. For example, when you’re running, start with a jog and gradually increase your speed - don’t start off sprinting.

Problem areas: knowing your problem areas will help you find ways to avoid injuring yourself. For example, if you have arthritis in your knee, you’ll know not to overwork your knees. You can talk to your trainer or doctor for exercises on how to work around your problem areas, or help strengthen them.

Vary your workout: overusing one set of muscles is an easy way to injure them. Using repetitive movements too often can result in tendinitis, shin splints, and other similar injuries. Switch up your exercises to avoid this. For example, run one day and lift weights the next.

Treat your injuries immediately: by treating your injuries immediately, you can potentially prevent them from getting worse. Products like the Handy Cure use low-level laser technology to target the injury deep in the skin’s tissue, stop swelling, and promote microcirculation to speed up recovery time.