Safety Tips to Prevent Injuries and Complete Warm up

Exercises increase your strength, flexibility and core stability if done properly. Improper exercises lead to injuries and severe pain. To avoid injuries or to reduce the risks of injuries you need to be very careful while practicing more intense workouts.

You may receive an injury when you start running with high impact without doing any warm up and flexibility exercises for your ankles, knees and upper body.

Stamina plays an important role in making you habitual in exercising and it also develops self-confidence and enthusiasm. When you jog or perform other physical activities with low stamina you can never fulfill your decided task and you leave it without completing.

Your body agility or nimbleness instills the spirit of doing more physical activities and it also encourages you to do some new things that make you creative.

What do we need to prevent sports injuries

Here are some tips to avoid fitness injuries;

•  Always do a warm up before starting any exercise or conditioning program. Warm up is too much necessary for all of us before starting any exercise, because it prepares our body for intense workouts and also prepares our muscles for next exercise and generate energy. If the warm up is incorporated with some stretching exercises, then it can increase the range of motion of involved muscles and improve blood flow throughout your body. An adequate warm up not only prepares your body for exercising, but also develop interest to perform different power full moves. 
• Know your body and do the suitable exercise that suits your fitness level and never try to increase intensity without completing initial or beginner exercise plan. Avoid sprint running, doing leg presses and also avoid using treadmill if you have a knee problem. Do some rehab workouts in order to treat your knee along with massage therapy and take energy foods (not the energy drinks).
• Always do some low to moderate impact exercises if you are a woman or enough older (above 40) and gradually rose to a climax. Men have more muscle mass than women and they can perform several powerful moves with ease and comfort, as compared to women.
• Start with slow exercises to prevent injuries and to get expected results in your exercise.
• Practice your different exercises on different days (non-consecutive), because overdoing certain exercises may result in injuries. After doing some intense workouts, our muscles need rest to recover and during this recovery period our body muscles become weaker than before, but after recovery they become stronger and increased in number too.
• Do not exercise if you are in a hurry or have less time to perform your routine exercise, because you can make or break your workout before it starts. 

How to do a proper warm up To build stamina

As described above that warm is too necessary, because it prepares our body for intense or medium exercises and also prevent fitness injuries like severe muscle pain, knee pain, back pain, neck strain and others.

Before launching your weight loss program it is important to know the healthy way of doing some physical activities that accelerate our metabolism that maintains healthy weight. 

An appropriate warm up prepares our body to perform intense workouts by generating sufficient energy and by increasing heart rate to a healthy level.

Warm up before you start your workout helps in increasing neural activation, warming up the joints and it also helps in alerting your senses if it is incorporated with suitable and necessary stretching exercises.

Many of us have more stiff body and they need proper warm up before starting any exercise. These people have poor thoracic spine mobility, weak hips and stiff and weak anterior core, so they need to do an adequate warm up to prevent injuries. 

Follow these simple tips for proper warm up along with important stretching exercises;

Heel rotation

• Stand straight resting both your hands on your side belly and raise your heel of right foot while supporting your body weight on your toes.
• Now, rotate this raised heel while making circle without lifting your toes.
• Do this exercise for both ankles for 30 to 40 sec for each ankle. This exercise prepares your ankles for jogging and running.

Knee Rotation

• Stand straight and then rest your hands on your knees (right hand on the right knee and the left hand on the left knee) while bending your upper body downwards.
• Now, slight bend your knees in forward direction to make a half chair.
• Now, rotate both of your knees while making circle.
• Do this exercise in clockwise and anti-clockwise direction for 1 to 1.5 minutes (for both direction) or complete 10 rotations for each direction.

Neck Rotation

Neck rotation is another important exercise that activates your neck muscles, upper back muscles, spine correction and shoulder muscles.

All neck stretches and other neck exercises should be performed in low pace in order to prevent injury.

Vertical Neck Movement

• Stand straight and rest your both arms on your side belly (right hand on right side and vice versa)

• Keep your lower back straight and move your head in downward direction in order to touch your chin to your chest and then move back to look at the sky and so on (do this exercise like you are saying “yes”). Repeat it 10 to 15 times in low pace. 

Horizontal Neck Movement

Move your head toward your right shoulder and then towards left shoulder in a straight line. Do this exercise 8 to 10 times (perform this exercise like you are saying “no”). 

Neck Rotation

• After doing vertical and horizontal exercises for neck it’s time to rotate your neck in all possible directions.

• Start from your right shoulder by touching your ear to your shoulder and start rotating your neck downwards, towards left shoulder, backwards while looking at sky and then towards starting position and continue this exercise.

• Repeat this exercise for 10 times only. 

Wall Pushing

• Stand in front of a wall and face towards the wall.
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• Rest your both hands on the wall as you are going to push the wall.
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• Place your feet apart from each other at the distance of two feet (in such a way that your right foot should behind your left foot). Or simply make a half chair stance while standing in front of the wall and stretch your right leg behind to straighten it while your left leg should be in chair stance.
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• Now, exert force on the right foot (stretched leg) as you are pushing the wall, but in fact you are stretching your right leg muscles especially calf muscles and hamstrings.
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• Do the same exercise for the left leg and repeat 3 to 5 times for each leg.

Shoulder Stretch

• Stand straight and open your legs at shoulder distance.
• Raise your right hand over your head and fold it to touch your back shoulder and grip right hand’s elbow with your left hand behind your head. 
• Now, move your right hand's elbow towards your left shoulder to stretch right shoulder.
• Do the same exercise for the left shoulder and repeat 10 to 15 time for each shoulder

Wrist Stretch

• stand straight and raise your both hands in front of your chest while making 90 degree angle between your chest and arms 
• close your fists and rotate them in clockwise and then in anti-clockwise direction
• Do this for 10 to 15 seconds 

Fingers and Hand Stretch

• Stretch your right hand in front of your chest while standing straight and making 90 degree angle between your arm and chest.
• Lift your fingers of stretched hand skywards and grasp them with left hand.
• Keep the right elbow straight and stretch your fingers with left hand towards your chest for 4 to 5 seconds
• Repeat this exercise for 4 to 6 times also practice this stretch while facing your fingers downwards for each hand.

Running or Jogging

Now, your body has completely prepared for running and jogging (as a warm up workout). Now, start running or jogging in low pace in cardio style in order to increase your heart rate and to generate energy through aerobic metabolism. Gradually increase the speed of running, but still in medium pace. Run for 5 to 8 minutes in this pace and then take a rest for maximum three (3) minutes.

For beginners

After recovering your breath start your sprint running for about 20 to 30 meter in low pace to build stamina and to burn fat through this high intensity workout. Beginners should sprint for 20 to 30 meters and then they should take complete rest for 2 minutes and then start again (20 to 30 meter sprint). Do this exercise 3 times that covers 60 to 90 meters.  

For intermediate

After a couple of weeks you can increase the length of your track from 30 to 50 meters and decrease duration from 2 minutes to 1 minute. Do this strength training 3 times. Each time you have to cover 50 meters and the recovery period should be 1 minute.

This workout will build muscular strength and stability along with great stamina. Sprint running is not the only workout you should rely on for your whole body fitness.

Generally, it is incorporated with other strength, weight training, body weight training and cardio exercises to build core stability and increased muscles mass (lean and stronger muscles).