No one wants to get injured. Unfortunately, injuries happen all the time in fitness, often leading to frustrating setbacks. One study found that over half of adults reported having experienced an exercise-related injury. But with a little bit of knowledge and preparation, you can help reduce your chances of getting injured and speed up your recovery if you do unfortunately get hurt. In this post, we will discuss five of the best injury prevention exercises and why they are so important.
Why Are Injury Prevention Exercises Important?
Prevention is always better than cure, and this is especially true when it comes to injuries. By incorporating some simple injury prevention exercises into your routine, you can help reduce your risk of injuring yourself and get back to training as soon as possible if an injury does occur.
Here are three reasons why carrying out injury prevention exercises is crucial:
#1. They Help You Stay Strong and Healthy
If you don’t want to get injured, it’s important to maintain a strong and healthy body. Injury prevention exercises are a great way to do this, as they help keep your muscles and joints strong and flexible. This not only reduces your risk of injury but can also improve your overall health and wellbeing.
#2: They Help You Stay Safe
When you’re performing any type of exercise, it’s important to be aware of the risks and take steps to minimize them. Injury prevention exercises help you do just that, by teaching you how to move safely and effectively while working out. This can not only help prevent injuries but also improve your performance and reduce the chances of getting injured while lifting weights or participating in other high-risk activities.
#3: They Help You Stay on Track
If you’re someone who likes to train hard, it’s important to make sure that you’re doing everything you can to stay healthy and injury-free. Injury prevention exercises are a great way to do this, as they help keep your body strong and resilient. This means that you can continue training hard without having to worry about injuring yourself, and you’ll be less likely to experience any setbacks due to injury.
Top 5 Injury Prevention Exercises To Keep You Healthy and Safe
Now that we know why injury prevention exercises are so important, let’s take a look at five of the best exercises you can do to stay safe while working out.
#1 Jefferson Curls
- Stand, feet pressed together, holding light weights with both hands in front of you.
- Hyper-extend the knees and squeeze the thighs together for the entirety of this exercise.
- While hyper-extended, start tucking your chin and rolling shoulders forward as if to ‘intentionally’ have bad posture.
- Then slowly curl your spine as you bend, overreaching the weight towards the ground. Imagine each of your vertebrae is a pearl along a string of pearls and you want each pearl to curl over the next one making a spiral. It should take about 5-10 seconds to reach the limit of your hamstring flexibility range.
- Take a deep breath in and out then slowly start working your way back up to a full standing position. Make sure you have proper posture.
How Does This Exercise Work?
Low back pain, shotty knees, pain between shoulder blades? This is straight out of the competitive gymnasts’ handbook. A personal favorite of RX Fit because it solves several problems all at once. Not just for injury prevention, or correction, but aesthetic problems as well, like posture.
The idea is that your posterior chain (backside of your body) is a linked system of muscles and you can pull on that system with weight and extreme flexibility. Since you’re holding weight during the movement you also get muscular development. As you allow your body to get pulled down by the weight you increase flexibility in every system on your backside, and then as you resist on your way back up you increase your strength in every system along your backside.
This is the gold standard for optimizing training and is symbolic of our philosophy.
Why only work on one thing at a time like injury prevention by functionally strength training?
Why only work on one thing at a time like cardiovascular health by going to a spin class?
Why only work on one thing at a time like increasing muscle mass by lifting heavy weights repetitively?
Do everything all at once and get on with your day.
#2 Wall Quad Stretch Pullovers
- Drop one knee to the ground and have that same foot up on the wall as high as you can.
- The opposite foot will be in front of you flat on the ground as if you’re taking a knee in football. This should cause the feeling of a stretch in the front of the leg for the leg of the knee on the ground.
- At this point, you can bring your arms straight out in front of you. This is your starting position.
- Next, lift your arms overhead, and as you do so try to push your hips forward.
- Then slide your hips back over the rear knee as your arms come back down. This should take about 3 seconds per rep. 12 on each side.
How Does This Exercise Work?
Do you know that feeling you get when you sit for an hour or two and then rise off the couch? Then you feel the groan of age and back pain and maybe Father Time is smirking in a slightly condescending way?
Well, that’s not age, that’s neglect.
You know the term, the bigger they are the harder they fall? Well, the biggest muscle group in the body are the quads (front of thigh) and when you let the quads tighten up they will immobilize you.
This stretch will open up those massive muscles and allow for your pelvis to shift into a position that won’t put force on your lumbar spine. This stretch is a mandatory movement for any new RX Fit client.
#3 Pec Lever Stretch
- Starting face down on the ground with arms wide, legs straight, and palms facing the ground.
- Roll to the right side leaving the right arm as-is and then pull in the left arm to use to press against the ground.
- The left leg will bend and twist with your hips to the right to place your foot flat on the ground on the right side of the body. This bent knee will be the lever. The further it is twisted towards the right, the more mobility in the inner thigh and the shoulder/arm.
- Switch after you reach your end range with the hip and shoulder/arm.
How Does This Exercise Work?
Shoulder pain is the most chronic problem we run into here at RX Fit. It can stop you in your tracks when working at your desk at home or in the office. So, we created a movement designed to hit the major bad players that can lead to the compression that leads to the pain.
The pectorals (chest muscles) don’t get a lot of action in daily life so they tend to lose mobility and then shrink causing a pull in the shoulder that pinches the nerves. Similarly, the anterior (front) muscle in the shoulders is very overactive from things like using a steering wheel, holding a cup of coffee, or holding your child. Life isn’t optimizing for your well-being, but we at RX Fit do.
#4 KB Windmills
- Stand tall with your feet in a wide stance.
- The right arm holding the kettlebell will be straight up with the bicep by the ear to start. The right arm holding the kettlebell will stay perpendicular to the ground at all times and it should not feel like you’re lifting weight but balancing weight.
- The left arm will be straight and aimed at the left foot.
- Push the butt back as you start the hinge toward that left foot and as you hinge shift the hips to the right, keeping all limbs perfectly straight and locked out. The aim is to reach as far as you can toward that foot without bending any limbs.
- When the end range is reached then start the trek back to standing using the obliques to pull the upper body to fully erect. 8-10 on each side, 3 rounds, with a moderate to light kettlebell weight (10-30lbs).
How Does This Exercise Work?
Kettlebell windmills are a full-body functional movement that is ideal to reduce ailments in the hips and shoulders. (There is a LOT of literature on this exercise, I don’t need to cover this one for you).
#5 Kickback Crossovers
- While in a straight arm plank position with a shoulder-width stance of feet, raise your right leg about 2 feet higher than your hips.
- Keep locked out with a pointed toe like a ballerina.
- When feet reach a peak of 2 feet above hips, start rotation of hips towards the left side. Only hips should rotate at this point. The stretch will be felt in the hips and lower abs of the right side as the rotation hits the end range.
- Rotate back into position after the end is reached and settle your foot back on the ground. Then alternate after each rep. 20 reps 3-4 rounds.
How Does This Exercise Work?
To reduce lethargy and increase energy aside from dieting, you can increase malleable muscles that have little to no resistance, which leads to a want to get up and move rather than a need to get up.
The simplest way to approach this is by reducing the villains to functional movement, hip flexors (TFL, and lower abdominals). This movement will open the hip flexors allowing freedom of movement while increasing blood flow, and core activation for posture support.
How RxFit Can Help You With Injury Prevention Exercises
Are you looking to reduce your risk of injury and pain? If so, you’ve come to the right place. The exercises we have provided in this blog post will help you avoid a variety of common injuries that can keep you from living life to its fullest potential. From strengthening key muscles with KB Windmills or opening up hip flexors with Kickback Crossovers, we have a variety of exercises that can help you prevent injuries and stay healthy.
Although these exercises are a great place to start, it is important to remember that injury prevention requires a holistic approach. That means combining these exercises with healthy eating habits, plenty of rest, and regular chiropractic care. At RX Fit, we can help you create a customized plan that meets your unique needs and helps you stay healthy and injury-free. RX Fit is a mobile personal training company that specializes in injury prevention and rehabilitation. We offer personalized one-on-one training or small group training to help you stay healthy and active, perfectly adjusted to your schedule.
Contact us today to learn more about our services or to schedule a free consultation.
