It doesn’t matter if you work out to feel good, to lose weight, or to start your bodybuilding career. Safety is important to your regime. You have goals and an injury, or pushing through an injury, is going to disrupt those goals. If your goals are disrupted, it could bruise your ego and discourage you from continuing. Rather than get frustrated with yourself, it’s a good idea to have a safety plan in place so that you can accomplish your desires. Today we have curated a list of safety tips to help you plan your workouts for the optimum results.
Watch The Weights
Weight training is important for a balanced workout. Some people just love picking up weights and going into “beast mode” and others really are striving for tone and definition to their body. This means that there is a gradual increase in the weights to push yourself and overcome your own mind. Unfortunately, not everyone has the same idea of what a gradual increase is. When weights are increased too quickly, it becomes easy to develop tendonitis because of the strain and repetitive motions. Tendonitis is painful and will have you down longer than you will like. A great general rule of thumb is to increase weight when your routine becomes easy. If you can suddenly do 30 bicep curls without heavy breathing and breaking a sweat, go up 5 lbs. If that is still too easy, go up another 5. Only increase when it is easy, not when your friend or gym buddy can bench more weight than you.
Change Things Up
The hardest part about working out is you might not like all of it. Guess what? That is okay! Change it up, try new things on occasion, and stick with what makes you feel great. Burpees are a popular part of a trainer’s routine but if you hate it, you will be discouraged from keeping up with it. At the same time, changing your routine keeps you looking forward to doing something slightly different. You have heard of leg day, right? That is a part of changing up your routine during the week. One day, spend time with some weights, jog the next, take a yoga class later in the week. By changing it up, you place a different focus on various parts of the body and keep things improving over time. For many people, they see faster results by changing things up.
Incorporate A Rest Day
One of the quickest ways to get injured is to overwork your body, especially if you are new to the fitness world. What a lot of people don’t realize is that workouts aren’t the only time your body is working at losing weight or toning muscle. The effects of a good workout last for a day or two and when you work out every day, it becomes too much for the body to handle. A rest day means you don’t work out, you don’t go for a run, and you don’t go hiking. It also doesn’t mean you lounge on the couch eating Oreo’s all day. It means you do all the stuff you would normally do just not anything strenuous. On that rest day, your body is still working on burning off calories and toning the muscles. It is recommended that a beginner should workout two days and then rests on the third. As time goes by, you may find that you want to work out. It’s often called the “fitness itch”. That is okay! You should then incorporate a light workout. At your peak, you should have at least one day a week where you aren’t working out.
Remember, working out is not a popularity contest. Don’t let your ego get in the way of your progress. You push yourself when you want to, do the exercises you like, and enjoy the heck out of it! It will be the best decision you have made yet.
