Weight-lifting mistakes lead to injuries
ASK THE TRAINERS
Skipping the warm-up, using bad back posture, lifting more than you can handle -- these fitness trainers have seen it all.
The weight room can be a confusing place for gym-goers. Often armed with too little information about how to properly handle weight and cable machines and free weights, they are ripe for making blunders -- and it can cost them, leading to major and minor injuries. We asked five Southern California trainers: What's the worst mistake you've seen people make in the weight room?
Nina Moore, trainer, the Sports Club/LA: "Not doing a proper warm-up before training. You'll see someone come in at 6 a.m. and the heaviest thing they've picked up so far is their gym bag, and they go right into doing a bench press with 175 pounds without doing any warm-up at all. If you don't do a warm-up, that's when you increase your risk of injury [pulled and strained muscles and ligaments, and sore joints]. An active warm-up prepares the body for the work to be performed. Doing warm-up exercises is also a great way to [engage] the core muscles.
"We have our clients do simple movements that mimic the activity they're going to do to get the joints and ligaments warmed up, increase muscle temperature and increase core temperature. On the floor [at the gym] we keep a bike, an ergometer [an upper-body exercise machine that uses arms and hands to rotate pedals], jump-ropes and [stability] balls for people to warm up. Or, you can do an exercise without adding resistance -- such as body weight lunges as a preparation for doing lunges with weights. You can also do push-ups.
"A good warm-up should include about 10 minutes of activity. That's also a time when you can clear your head and focus on what you want to accomplish during the workout."
Rob Glick, Newport Beach-based co-founder of Global Fitness Solutions, member of IDEA Health & Fitness Assn.: "People don't understand about maintaining their trunk and spine stability while lifting weights. They're just throwing the weights up rather than lifting the weights and I'm thinking, 'Oh my God, I can hear their back screaming.'
"When doing weights on a fixed machine, you're making an isolated movement and strengthening your body in this one position. So you relax your core, because the bench is giving you stability. Free weights and cables are much more functional, so that's where the deeper understanding of the core comes into play. Core strength and core control can be a stabilizer and an anchor. If I want my core to work as a stabilizer, I want to maintain a nice, proper posture and then do the movement. Slow down initially and connect to the movement properly. Don't worry about how much weight you're lifting. Once you understand how to do it, let your body be your guide to how much weight and how many reps you should do."
