Tips to Help Prevent Injuries

My goal is always to prevent an injury instead of treating an injury. It’s not always possible to prevent injuries, like injuries from getting hit or tripping.

While there’s a better chance for other injuries (tendinitis, It band issues, some strains, etc) to be prevented because they are from weaknesses or compensations.

So why not try and avoid preventable injuries as much as possible?

Here are some things you can do right now:

1. While starting a new activity daily is a great way to build a habit. Starting too intense or going for too long can cause injury. It’s better to slowly build. Your body needs time to “rebuild” itself so you can eventually increase intensity and length. Even if you’re not new to your sport, going too intense without proper recovery time also means your body is more at risk for injury.

2. Being aware of warning signs your body is giving out. The bit of pain you’ve been feeling could be a warning sign that you need to pay attention to before it gets worse. Maybe you’ll need to add a strengthening program or a stretching program (maybe both) to your routine.

3. Many of us are spending our days sitting, so our bodies have developed tightness and weakness in some muscles from that posture. It’s hard to undo the tightness if we just have one stretching session. You’ll want to get up and move around several times a day. Why not add a few stretches to each break?

These are a couple of my go to stretches.

Hip Flexor stretch and Quadriceps stretch: Our sitting position shortens our hip muscles so this will help.

Taking a bit more time to avoid injury is worth it. Especially when injuries often force you to stop your sport for a bit.

L.