Warm Up Activities and Other Tips to Avoid Injuries

Tip! Once you are finished eating it is a good idea to eat a snack or even an energy drink that is loaded with carbohydrates. This gives your body an extra burst. It is best to look into this high carbohydrate snack about 2 hours before your workout.

While it is not possible to completely avoid all types of injuries, by taking some precautions like doing proper warm up exercises, it is possible to greatly reduce your risk of injury. However,

simply reducing the risk of injury is not a task that is always easy to handle. By carefully following some precautions there are ways that you can avoid injuring yourself.

Tip 1. It is best to always ensure you are in the best physical shape possible before you begin playing a sport. Whether you are looking into tennis, football, baseball, or even basketball amongst the numerous sports available, it is best to be in shape. While playing sports will help get you into better shape physically, it is best to be in shape before beginning.

Tip 2. Ensure you know all of the rules and guidelines for the sport you are playing. Following the rules can help ensure that you can avoid injury resulting from playing inappropriately. In addition, make sure you play with others who follow the rules as well. If someone else breaks the rules while playing, it increases your risk of injury.

>Tip! Remember, limiting the amount of sugar that you consume is best since it only gives you energy for the initial start to the activity. The carbohydrates that you consumed before will provide you with the long-term energy that you need to be successful.

Tip 3. Always wear the appropriate safety equipment whenever playing sports. This should be applied regardless of playing a practice, scrimmage, tournament, or even just playing around with friends. The safety equipment exists for a reason and it is very important to help protect you from accidents and injuries. Without wearing the equipment, you are increasing your risk of being injured.

Tip 4. Do a thorough warm up before starting to play. If you are playing on a team, you should play on teams that ensure warm up activities are done before the games start. This helps to stretch and slowly warm up your muscles and really reduces the risk of injuries. Skipping a warm up may seem like a great way to make up for running late for a game, but this is a huge risk to your safety.

Tip 5. If you are tired, sick or hurting do not play. If you play on a team ensure you tell the coach about any problems that you are experiencing and let them know you will not be playing. You should never agree to play when you are tired because it increases the risk of being injured since you are not fully alert. When you are sick, your body is always in a weakened condition and able to become injured much easier and finally when you are already in pain, you likely already have an injury of some form that needs some time to heal.

Tip! In order to achieve the best results it is ideal if you break up your eating habits before competitions and try to limit the amount of food that you are eating right before engaging in sports.

Tip 6. Ensure that you are getting enough rest. While the idea of playing your favorite sport 24/7 may seem like the greatest idea, it is vital that you get at least 8 hours of sleep a day as well as take frequent breaks to ensure you do not wear yourself out. While training is a vital aspect of sports, getting the necessary rest to allow your body time to heal and recover is just as important. By resting when necessary, you are ensuring that you will have a long and happy sports career whether you are simply playing for fun, playing for a team, or playing professionally.

Avoiding injuries is a very important consideration for athletes and by following the tips and suggestions mentioned above it should help to greatly improve your performance and reduce your risk of injury all at the same time.

The following article is written by Dr Gabe Mirkin, author of multiple fitness reports. It emphasizes the importance of warm up activities before starting your actual workout or competition. Warm up exercises are essential, not only to avoid injuries but also to make sure your body is ready for physical activities.

Get the Most from Your Warm-Up

Warming up before you exercise helps to prevent injuries and lets you jump higher, run faster, lift heavier or throw further. Your warm-up should involve the same muscles and motions you plan to use in your sport. For example, before you start to run very fast, do a series of runs of gradually-increasing intensity to increase the circulation of blood to the muscles you will be using.

Muscles are made up of millions of individual fibers, just like a rope made from many threads. When you start to exercise at a very slow pace, you increase the blood flow to muscle fibers, increase their temperature, and bring in more oxygen, so the muscles are more pliable and resistant to injury. When you contract a muscle for the first time, you use less than one percent of your muscle fibers. The second time you bring in more fibers, and you keep on increasing the number of muscle fibers used in each contraction for several minutes of using that muscle. It's called recruitment. When you are able to contract more muscle fibers, there is less force on each individual fiber to help protect them from injury. Usually you are warmed up when you start to sweat.

The same principle applies to your heart. Angina is a condition in which the blood vessels leading to the heart are partially blocked so the person has no pain at rest, but during exercise, the blocked arteries don't permit enough blood to get through to the heart muscles, causing pain. If people with angina exercise very slowly before they pick up the pace, they are able to exercise longer and more intensely before they felt heart pain. Always check with your doctor if you feel any heart pain during exercise.

Tip! Remember, worrying about the calories you are consuming is not as important as ensuring that you are giving your body the fuel that it needs to function. In addition, about one hour before your workout looking into a sports drink is a really good idea. Following this schedule should have your body well stocked with plenty of energy to handle the rigors of your workout.

Competitive athletes in sports requiring speed and endurance perform better after they warm up with increasing intensity. Warming up slowly does not increase the maximum amount of oxygen that you can bring to muscles that you need during competition. If you are a runner, skier, cyclist, or an athlete in any sport that requires endurance, warm up at a gradually increasing pace. Use a series of increasingly intense repetitions of 10 to 30 seconds duration, with short recoveries, until you are near your maximum pace. This type of warm-up increases endurance because intensity increases the maximum amount of oxygen that you can bring to your muscles, as you continue to compete, and lets your muscles contract with greater force as you begin to fatigue. You will then be able to bring in more oxygen to your muscles than you could have done without the intense warm-up.

Dr. Gabe Mirkin has been a radio talk show host for 25 years and practicing physician for more than 40 years; he is board certified in four specialties. For more information and hundreds of fitness reports, visit http://www.drmirkin.com/

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