Mistakes not to make in the gym: too much haste, little warm-up, wrong equipment

Lphysical activity an important foundation for good health and for living a long time but, if you do not tackle the exercise with a minimum of preparation, the
injury
behind the corner. One of the most frequent mistakes reported by sports doctors and personal trainers is wanting to do too much too soon. Many people join the gym in January with the aim of making up for the excesses of the holidays and hit the ground running with a program that is too intense, overestimating their preparation. Many believe that lifting increasingly heavier weights and immediately pushing yourself to the limit is the fastest way to get results. The result of so much haste? Injury and abandonment of sporting activity.

Warm up your muscles

Even if the time available is limited,
Skip the warm-up
always a bad move, especially if you exercise early in the morning when you have just gotten out of bed or if you have spent eight hours sitting in the office. The worst thing you can do in the gym is to put yourself on tinkering with weights without your muscles being ready for it. fundamental one dynamic heating with targeted stretching exercises, which affect the back part of the body.

Use tools well

The equipment, whether it be that of the gym or a bicycle, must be used correctly otherwise not only do you risk not obtaining the maximum benefit from the training, but also strain muscles and ligaments that shouldn't be used. A typical mistake is to hold on to the handrails of treadmills or the handlebars of exercise bikes or spinning bikes when you feel tired and this can cause neck and shoulder pain. Better slow down the pace than risking a neck injury.

The bike saddle

Riding a bicycle may seem like a simple exercise, but this activity can also cause injuries. A frequent mistake when cycling is having the wrong saddle height. If the bike seat is too low or too high, the risk is strain the knee and lower back, thus causing pain. To know what the right seat height is, you need to take into account that your toes are the only thing that should touch the floor.

The pace of the race

Those who approach running without too much experience run the risk of making a mistake step too long, or a poor pace or on the contrary to overtraining. Long stride is a common running mistake: it occurs when you land with your foot too far in front of your hips or knees. This movement exposes you to the risk of joint-related problems. According to one 2021 study , increasing the cadence or frequency of your steps reduces the high impact of running, thus reducing the risk of injury. Furthermore, by taking shorter steps you avoid the consequences on the joints caused by taking too long a step. To understand if there are gait problems, the sole of the shoes: if the heels or the external part are particularly worn it could be a sign that you are landing too forcefully and too frequently in non-optimal places.

Push yourself beyond the pain threshold

The temptation to go beyond one's limits to achieve results more quickly is quite common, but you always need to listen to your body to understand if something isn't working, because training with pain doesn't make you stronger, but rather injured. The difference between muscle soreness and pain that the first passes within a couple of days and still tends to improve with stretching and movement while the second persists and can only risk getting worse. Muscle soreness, however, should not be underestimated because it could be an equally negative sign. In fact, if you feel it on one leg and not on the other, it could indicate that you are compensating incorrectly due to an injury.

Vary the movements

Always do the same workoutEven correctly, this is a mistake, because by always strengthening the same muscles over and over again, you can risk serious injuries, such as tendonitis or tibial periostitis. Training that is always the same can also lead to'plateau effect of physical fitness (HERE how to fix it), for this reason in the gym you should vary the machines, follow different group courses, alternate aerobic exercise to develop cardiopulmonary capacity and anaerobic exercise to exercise strength or opt for the so-called cross-training, a technique of training based on athletic gestures taken from different disciplines, even in contrast with each other, which allows you to increase the general organic potential in a single session.

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