How to Avoid Injury When You Get Back to the Gym
Coming back to the gym after a long break is a strange feeling. Either you are weaker than you were before, or you are in a different shape (you may not have exercised while the gym was paused, but you ran a lot), but you still remember your old weights, your old steps, your old routines.
Going back as if you never left is a recipe for frustration and perhaps even injury. Fortunately, the human body is stable and adaptable. Follow these tips and you will soon be back to your old daily routine.
Increase over time
If you do something repetitive, like running, your biggest risk is not in what you do on one particular day, but rather in the total amount of work you do. Beginner runners are more likely to get injured than experienced runners , and most running injuries are overuse injuries that creep up on you over time.
As we discussed in our guide to injury prevention as a beginner runner , you don’t have to worry too much about your shape or your choice of shoes. What’s more important is keeping most of your run at an easy, slow pace and increasing your overall workload over time, rather than running right away every day.
Other repetitive actions can follow the same pattern. If you decide to swim 50 laps every morning, don’t be surprised if your shoulders get sore after doing this for a week in a row. Instead of quickly moving forward towards your goal, start with a shorter workout several times a week and gradually increase it each week while you still feel good.
Do not try to squeeze the maximum on the first day.
Testing your strength is fun, but it’s probably best to think of test days as a privilege that you earn by working hard in training .
You can injure yourself by lifting heavy weights improperly, but something heavy is not enough to create the risk of injury. Rather, your body is adjusting to the stresses you put on it, so what you lift should be what you trained to lift.
If you’ve done a lot of squatting 170, 180, 190 pounds, it’s not too big a jump to ask your body to do 200. But if you squatted at zero and then loaded 200, your body might not be ready for it.
Instead of testing your strength right away, start with some basic level of your body’s work so it can adapt. You will still be successful during this time, so take your time. After a few weeks, you will feel like yourself again.
Expect improvement
So you need to refrain from your first day at the gym. Bummer. But don’t get attached to this fact so that you forget to challenge yourself.
In truth, beginners can make huge strides in pretty much every area of fitness pretty quickly, be it strength, speed, endurance, or whatever. And if you’ve had experience before and are now back to being newbies, you can probably achieve the same results even faster.
Make a plan. You may not know how quickly you will improve, so try to listen to your body – not only to find out your limitations, but also to find out if you can do more than you expected . Try to gain weight every week and see what happens. Increase your resistance on the elliptical trainer several notches. Enroll in an intermediate class if the beginner is doing well. You never know what you can do until you try it.
Build consistency
We’ve already established that there are no prizes for breaking personal records on the first day at the gym, so how can you measure your efforts?
I like to think of it this way: your goal at this stage is to achieve consistency . The consistency of your efforts is the foundation upon which achievement is built . So instead of thinking, “How much can I raise today?” or “How high can I rank on the leaderboard in this class?” ask yourself, “How does this help me build stability?”
If you have a concrete answer to that question — something like, “I’m teaching a beginner course three times this week, and next week I’ll sign up for two beginner classes and one intermediate class,” then you have control over the process. and you’re off to a great start.