Avoiding Weight Lifting Injuries

Lifting weights is the best way to build lean muscle mass and increase strength, but it can also lead to injuries if you're not careful. Here are six common causes of weight lifting injuries and how to avoid them.    

1. Using bad form and technique. Far too many people use bad form and technique when lifting weights, and it's a common cause of injury. People perform their reps at a fast speed using more momentum than muscle power. People heave, swing, or bounce the weight instead of lifting it. Bad form and technique often occurs when someone is using a weight that's too heavy for them to lift properly. Use a weight that challenges you, but that's not so heavy that your form and technique get sloppy. Use muscle power, not momentum, to lift the weight. Don't heave, swing, or bounce the weight. Lift and lower the weight in a steady and controlled manner while concentrating on feeling the muscle that you're working (this is called the mind-muscle connection).

2. Not warming up. You need to take the time to properly warm up before lifting weights. Warming up will stimulate blood flow to your muscles, increase your joint flexibility and range of motion, and get you mentally prepared for your workout, all of which helps prevent injury. Warm up by doing a few minutes of light aerobic exercise and one or two light sets of each weight lifting exercise before using heavier weights.

3. Training too often. Overtraining saps your energy and interferes with both your muscle's and nervous system's ability to recuperate from your weight lifting workouts. If you're in a depleted, weakened state from overtraining, your risk of injury increases. You also have to realize that muscles don't grow during training, they grow after training. Lifting weights causes microscopic tears in the muscles, and rest days allow the muscles to repair themselves, grow, and get stronger. Training too often and not giving your muscles enough time to recover from training not only increases your risk of injury, it also causes muscle growth and strength increases to come to a halt.

4. Not listening to your body. When lifting weights, you need to work out with a lot of intensity if you want to build muscle and increase strength. But if your tired and lacking energy prior to a particular weight lifting workout, you may need to ease up on the intensity for that particular workout, or even consider not working out at all that day. Pushing yourself too hard when you're tired and lacking energy increases your risk of injury.

5. Lack of concentration. If you're distracted, preoccupied or lackadaisical when lifting weights, especially when performing free weight exercises like barbell squats or dumbbell shoulder presses, you're inviting injury.

6. Poor nutrition. Weight training and proper nutrition go hand in hand. Proper nutrition provides you with the energy you need for your weight training workouts. Without proper nutrition, you'll be in a depleted, weakened state, and your risk of injury will increase. Proper nutrition is not only necessary to fuel your workouts, it's also necessary to help you recover from your workouts.

As you can see, avoiding weight lifting injuries is not difficult. Just follow these guidelines and your weight training workouts will be productive and injury free.