Natural Bodybuilders Fitness Longevity

Longevity

WAYS OF AVOIDING INJURY

If you get injured it can slow down your progress or even permanently halt your bodybuilding career. So always be careful when lifting weights and remember the following rules:

1. Do five minutes on the stationary bike before lifting any weights. The idea is to get blood flowing into the muscles which makes them more flexible. Never start exercising a cold muscle. I recommend doing a bike exercise like ‘HILL PROFILE’ which starts easy and gets progressively more difficult.

2. Do five minutes of stretching. Starting with your lower back which is the weak link in your body. The best way to warm up your lower back is to do TWISTS. This is performed by placing a wooden pole across your shoulders and then by twisting your waist around 180 degrees. You must keep your legs and hips facing front. The aim is to warm up your lower back muscles before you do your other stretches.

3. Make sure you stretch and warm up the whole body before you start. If you can’t be bothered to do warm ups because they take up time then just imagine how much time you’ll have once you’ve got an injury. The muscles that get injured the most are SHOULDERS, BACK and CHEST. So make sure you warm these up thoroughly first.

4. As already mentioned the body has got weak links and you must do particular exercises to strengthen them. These are:

A) THE LOWER BACK

A good exercise is stiff legged deadlifts (described under HAMSTRINGS) with two light dumbbells by your sides. Don’t go too heavy and remember to use perfect technique.

B) THE KNEES

Before training your legs warm up your knees by doing a set of leg extensions. But this time use a fairly light weight and do 30 continuous repetitions.

C) THE WRISTS

Before doing any upper workout training or even when you’re not training I recommend a set of wrist curls to warm up your wrists. This is performed by sitting on a bench with a dumbbell in one hand with your arm balanced on your leg. Then curl up the dumbbell with your wrist. Do 30 repetitions with a light weight.

D) THE ELBOWS

You can strengthen these by doing triceps pull downs for 30 repetitions with a light weight.