Injury prevention tips for training at home

Although home workouts have become increasingly popular as a more flexible and affordable approach to exercise, one downside is that there is no trainer around to guide your activities. This leaves more potential for poor form and injuries, especially for beginners. 

This, however, shouldn't get in the way of you remaining active and feeling your best.

If your worry is sustaining an injury when working out at home, let's take a look at some simple ways on how to prevent injuries, and tips that anyone can implement!

1. Stretch

2. Invest in the correct equipment

3. Pay attention to form

4. Don’t ignore pain

5. Personalise your routine

6. Hire a professional

7. Recovery is key

Stretch

Before you begin any sort of workout routine, whether that is body-weight exercises or simply running on a treadmill, it is very important for you to stretch and warm up your muscles and joints before you get started.

This will prevent a large number of injuries from happening prematurely.

Invest in the correct equipment

Another way to reduce the risk of injury, is to make sure you’ve got the best workout equipment at home.

Depending on your choice of exercise, a pair of trainers with the correct support for your feet and ankles, may help reduce pressure on other joints in your body, in contrast to if you were to complete your workout with bare feet. 

Likewise, investing in an exercise mat may help reduce the risk of slipping and falling while working out, depending on the type of workout you've selected.

Pay attention to form

A lot of injuries are likely to be the direct result of simply not completing an exercise correctly. 

If you’re a beginner, it’s worthwhile hiring a personal trainer, or relevant qualified professional. They will be able to teach you each exercise and correct your form and posture, which will ensure you achieve the best results. 

If you’ve already been trained, working out in front of a mirror will help you to visually see if your form is off, so you can correct this before risking sustaining an injury.

Don’t ignore pain

Although some pain is expected at some point, wearing yourself out in the name of working out shouldn’t be what you aim to do. There is a common misconception that strength exercises are meant to stretch you to a point where all you feel is pain. That can be very dangerous.

The idea behind strength exercises (like weightlifting and using resistance bands) is to train specific parts of your body and build up some muscles, not to stretch your muscles to a breaking point. Acute pain during home workout sessions could be your body’s way of telling you something is seriously wrong, and therefore, should never be ignored.

Personalise your routine

What works for your friends may not necessarily work for you. We are all flexible in different ways, have our strong and weak sides, and have suffered from a range of different injuries throughout our lifetime.

So, if you have knee problems, it probably isn’t a good idea to jump on squats or to run on the treadmill for 30 minutes.

If your home workout is targeted towards building muscle, consider starting off by focusing solely on your form, ensuring this is correct first. Once you’re happy with the initial exercise, then you can think about incorporating lighter weights into your workout routine. Adding in heavier weights before you’re ready will put you at greater risk of sustaining a painful injury. 

Likewise, don’t be afraid to mix up your exercise routine. If you’re consistently working the same muscles by repeating the same exercises without an adequate rest period, you may start to cause your body harm. 

Hire a professional

Whatever your reasoning for working out from your home may be, you can always take advantage and hire a local personal trainer to help you out with your exercises to achieve your goals.

The great thing about hiring a personal trainer for your home workouts is that they don’t even need to come to you in person. You can quite simply do it over a Zoom call or have them make videos for you to follow.

Recovery is key

Another tip for sports injury prevention, when working out at home, be sure to take time to rest your muscles after exercising. If you don’t let your body recover fully, you may be at higher risk of sustaining an injury the next time you workout. 

To sum up

Regular exercise has endless benefits for your body, mind, energy levels and overall health. These simple injury prevention tips will enable your exercise routines to leave you feeling your best in the safest way possible.