Every move is inseparable from people's movements. The main function of joints is movement. So protecting the joints is very important. But many people ignore the protection of joints during exercise.
Joints play a supporting role in sports. We can do all kinds of movements flexibly and rely on strong joints, allowing us to encourage muscle contraction at the peak during high-intensity training.
However, there are often problems with joint pain. Avoiding joint injuries has become a major focus in fitness training. In fact, as long as you find skills to avoid joint injuries in sports, it is still very easy to do.
The purpose of heavy weight training is not to strengthen the joints, so the joints are easily injured. Even if the posture is correct, long-term high-intensity strength training may cause joint injuries such as shoulder joints, knee joints, elbow joints, and hips. Pain is a sign of joint damage.
Many people think that it is a normal phenomenon after training when they feel pain, and they don’t pay attention, or they don’t notice it, so they only pay attention when the joints are very damaged.
When visiting a doctor, doctors often judge these as inflammation of the body, such as tendinitis, bursitis, arthritis and so on.
Inflammation on these joints has certain avoidance techniques before damage, prevent them from happening, mastering training skills will allow you to be comfortable in training.
- Replace with another action when you are in pain
There are many movements to exercise the same muscle, which is not necessarily suitable for you. When a certain muscle is used to train a muscle, and it hurts, try to replace it with another movement.
For example: fitness people who often do large strength training usually have shoulder pain, so there will be a tingling sensation when pushing the barbell. This is because the shoulder is locked, which reduces the range of activity and enhances the strength of the shoulder. If you do bench press training at this time, it will aggravate the symptoms of shoulder inflammation.
Use a single joint to practice chest movements, such as a dumbbell bird or rope clip chest. Although the effect is different, it can avoid further shoulder damage. In this way, not only the shoulders are rested, but the movement of the single joint can also stimulate the muscle groups that are usually ignored.
Moreover, if the chest press is used instead of the bench press, there are many ways, such as changing the angle of the bird, which can stimulate different positions of the chest.
If you replace the barbell with a dumbbell, it will be more flexible, and you can always find an angle without pain by adjusting the position of your elbow. In addition, due to the instability of dumbbells, the stimulation of muscles can be significant, and multiple dumbbells are not required to obtain the same stimulation.
- Control movements to avoid "ejection start"
Many people will bounce from the chest when doing a large power bench press. The purpose of this is to increase the weight, but it has no effect on muscle training, but may damage the joints.
Relying on the inertia of squatting when squatting; swinging back and forth when doing rowing to do more weight than you can do is not conducive to joint movements.
When training, do not rush to achieve success, do not blindly compare, according to your own ability, complete the movement according to standard movements to effectively avoid joint damage.
- Practice free weight more, less practice fixed equipment
Many novices like fixed-device training because it is difficult to control time with self-weight training. However, fixed instruments all have a certain trajectory. Although no skills are required, the joints will be restricted when training.
Since each person's arm length and leg length are different, this limitation may cause physical discomfort (dumbbells, barbells, and ropes do not have this problem), so you should practice less fixed equipment, learn self-weight skills, and practice free weight.
- Warm up fully
The importance of warming up has always been emphasized, but few people can remember to warm up, or fully warm up. Full warm-up can help break through training weight, congest muscles, relax muscle fibres, and increase body flexibility and expand range of motion.
Do 5 to 10 minutes of aerobic exercise before high-strength training, or do a few sets of small-strength before formal training to increase your heart rate. So to avoid joint injuries, you must do dynamic stretching before training and static stretching after training.
- Focus on muscle exertion time instead of exhaustion of each group
Many novices have the misconception that "the best training results can only be achieved by exhaustion." Such training methods are prone to joint damage.
Exhaustion in training can only be used as a way to occasionally increase and break through training intensity. Every time training is exhausted, joints are easily damaged. For good training results, muscle strength is the key, so don’t be exhausted. Standard movements and muscle strength are the key points you should pay attention to.
- Avoid locking the joints
Traditional fitness requires locking the joint once for each movement (that is, each movement is full), but in the multi-joint movement of training the chest, triceps and legs, once locked, the weight will be transferred to the joints. With the habit of resting during the movement, the joints will bear more stress.
For example, the first 10° and the last 10° of the leg flexion and extension will be very stressed on the knee joint, and kicking the leg during training will damage the patella and cause knee pain.
When you feel pain during training, the joint may be locked. If you don't want to lose this action, you can try to reduce the range of action. Although the effect will be weakened, you can avoid injury.