An exercise routine is only helpful if you’re healthy enough to stick with it. Small injuries and strains can be the biggest distractions in a successful, long-term exercise routine. The fear of getting injured again and feeling pain is discouraging for most people. In order to reduce the likelihood of workout-related injury, take some preventative steps.
Avoiding Injuries after Bariatric Surgery
Here are some easy ways to avoid injury and keep your workout something to look forward to.
- Stretch before you begin to exercise. By limbering up your muscles, you make them more flexible and adaptable to the strain of exercise. This makes you less likely to pull muscles.
- Warm up to your routine. You cannot start your work out in a full-on run. You need to stretch, walk a little bit, and then start the more strenuous part of your exercise. When you start out with too much vigor, you put extra pressure on your muscles, which makes them more prone to injury.
- Drink up while you work out. Your muscles release toxins as you exercise, and staying hydrated helps this process. It also replenishes some of the moisture lost through sweating.
- Take time to cool down. Instead of coming to a sudden stop in your workout, take a few minutes to walk slowly, stretch, or even do some yoga in order to help your body to cool down gradually.
- Exercise daily. You know you need a certain amount of exercise each week. If you attempt to work all that exercise into a two- or three-day time span, you could be doing your body more damage than good. The sudden and intense strain on your muscles after days of sedentary life will likely make your workout sessions harder, which can result in discouragement.
- Work up to your target heart rate. In order to gain real aerobic benefit from your workout, you must push your body to a mild sweat and your heart to within your target heart rate. This is the optimal zone for your workout. Too much harder and you could hurt yourself, not hard enough and you won’t gain enough of a benefit from the workout.