How To Be Injury Proof Throughout Your Life And Your Training

May 19, 2022 3 min read

For a lot of people training involves going to the gym, a 2 minute warm up (at most), picking up some weight that they haven’t properly prepared for, feeling sore afterwards, having a shower and leaving, whilst not thinking about the overall consequences and damage being done to their bodies. And thinking that training is something compulsory to do and not an exciting or enjoyable journey.

I always preach FBE (Form Before Everything) with all my clients, as well as a thorough warm up before, and a cool down after, each session. This is how we prevent injury, avoid fatigue and promote solid training habits. This also leads to your body being infinitely more efficient with the strength it has, as well as being prepared for compound movements, that work multiple muscle groups and planes of motion, in all the right ways. This is my training foundation before moving on to adding more weight to an exercise or adding more advanced bodyweight movements and skills. Gradual evolution, constant practice of the fundamentals and keeping our discipline, as well as our focus, are paramount to that. Being mindful of your bodies mind to muscle connection is also a huge factor of injury proofing, as you can then know what is and what isn’t right for your body. For example, you can push your knees out of your toes in a squat position, if it feels correct, stable and strong for you.

When thinking about injury proofing, we also need to make sure we have strength and mobility in the end ranges of our limbs, joints and movements. We can start by making sure all the movement planes of the body are worked in a training program, or even in singular exercises. There are three planes of movement the body can work through. The first is the Sagittal Plane, which is working forward and backward movements. The second is the Frontal Plane, which works side-to-side movements. And the third is the Transverse Plane, which works rotational and twisting movements.

Once we have those movement patterns worked out, we can then look to improve our mobility and flexibility using resistance bands, during our warm up and cool down phases. Some exercises I would recommend looking up are Shoulder Suicides, Reverse Flys and Scapula Elevation, Protraction and Retraction – all of which can be done using a resistance band. For our warms ups, don’t do any stretching – make sure the body keeps moving. This is because the muscle fibres can lose strength having been stretched. So remember, mobility in the warm up and flexibility in the cool down.

Keeping active and mobile with a good stretching routine will massively help with injury proofing regardless of age or training ability. Due to our more sedentary culture these days, our bodies tend not to be engaged or used to their fullest potential. Keeping on top of that and even just remembering to stretch out when you wake up and go to bed will be massively helpful for mobility and recovery too.

Long holds in those hangs from the bar, stretches or maximum rotations can help our body adapt and feel comfortable, to protect ourselves from injury, as well as building strength in the end ranges of our movements. We can also use our end range strength to keep our joints mobile and strong. Think about a shoulder raise and holding the weight at that point of elevation of slightly longer, and you will notice the difference in difficulty and strength gains very quickly! This can be applied to Shoulder Flys, Raises, Deadlifts, Presses or basically anything where you have any limbs outstretched and straight.

We can use kit like Macebells and Kettlebells to help injury proof our bodies. So, what are you waiting for? Grab them from the Gravity Fitness Store now! And then show us how mobile you can be! Tag us @gravity.fitness on social media so we can see your progress!