How to Overcome Injuries?

We don’t yet have a cure for the common cold, but we do have a reliable remedy for most minor sprains and strains: RICE, an acronym for Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. RICE is most effective if you begin the process within 48 hours of injuring yourself. RICE includes the following four components:

• Rest: Stop performing activities that aggravate your injury. (Notice that we didn’t say stop all activity — that’s rarely the solution.) Wait until you’ve had two completely pain-free days before doing exercises that involve the injured area.
• Ice: Contrary to popular belief, ice, not heat, helps reduce the pain and swelling of most common injuries. Ice your injury for 15 to 20 minutes, 3 or 4 times a day, for as long as you feel pain. You can apply ice with a store-bought pack, a plastic bag full of ice cubes, and even a package of frozen strawberries. But don’t allow ice to sit directly against the skin. (You may end up with ice burns.) Instead, wrap whatever is holding your ice in a thin towel. Throw out the berries after they’ve been used as an ice pack a few times. The thawing and refreezing renders the berries less tasty than they would’ve been before. Two areas may not respond well to icing: your neck and back. These injured areas may be so sensitive to the cold that you may tense up. If that’s the case, a moist heating pad or wet, warm towel is best for treating the injury and allowing your muscles to relax.
• Compression: Put pressure on the injury to keep the swelling down. Use a damp elastic bandage or buy a special brace or wrap for your knee, elbow, or wrist. Wrap the bandage tightly enough so you feel some tension but not so firmly that you cut off your circulation or feel numb.
• Elevation: Elevating your injured body part drains away fluids and waste products so swelling goes down. If you’ve hurt your ankle, you don’t need to lift it up over your head. You only need to elevate it higher than your hip so gravity assists the blood flow downward. Propping up your ankle on several pillows or books does the trick (pillows will be more comfortable, of course).

Sometimes RICE isn’t enough to treat an injury. If the pain is truly excruciating or is bothersome for more than a few days, your injury probably needs more aggressive treatment and possibly medical attention. If you experience excessive swelling, discoloration, or bleeding, you may need a trip to the emergency room. Use your judgment. If you see a bone fragment sticking out of your ankle, don’t simply stick an ice pack over it.

Common Weight Training Injuries

Accidents happen, even to careful lifters. So, here’s a primer on weight training injuries in case you do run into one.
When you strain or pull a muscle, you actually overstretch or tear the tendon, the tough, cordlike tissue at the end of the muscle where the muscle tapers off and attaches to the bone. A strain can happen when you push up the bar too forcefully during the bench press or stand up too quickly out of the squat. Strains are often accompanied by a sudden, sharp pain and then a persistent ache.
A sprain is something different altogether. This injury happens not to a muscle but to a joint, such as your ankle or wrist. When you sprain a joint, you’ve torn or overstretched a ligament, the connective tissue that attaches one bone to another. You may feel pain and throbbing and notice some swelling and bruising. You can sprain just about any joint in your body; ankles and wrists seem to take the most beating.
Depending on the severity of the injury, the healing process may take anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of months. If your injury doesn’t appear to be healing, see your doctor. Some of the common injuries caused by lifting weights include the following:

• Torn rotator cuff: The muscles of your rotator cuff are often injured during bench presses and shoulder presses. You may have torn your rotator cuff if

• You feel a persistent ache or a sharp pain deep within your shoulder at a specific point during the exercise.
• You’re unable to raise your arm in front of you and over your head. If you’ve injured your rotator cuff
• Stop performing any exercises that cause you pain or soreness in that area.
• Skip all overhead pressing movements for as long as your healthcare provider recommends that you rest. You shouldn’t exercise while you have any pain.
• Lighten up your load on the bench press to a weight where you don’t feel any pain.
• Limit the distance you move the bar.
• Or skip the exercise altogether.
• Review your form: Make sure that you’re not bouncing the weights up and down or taking the exercise past your natural active range of motion that you can control. The rotator cuff exercises can help prevent injuries to these muscles. These exercises are a must if you lift heavy weights, if you lift regularly two to three times a week, or if you participate in a sport that uses the upper body, such as tennis, rock climbing, or swimming.
• Sore knees: Pinpointing the source of the problem can be difficult with knee injuries because the injury can come in so many varieties and have so many different causes. Often, the injury is caused by something you did outside of the weight room. Still, certain weight training mistakes, are likely culprits. Runners, walkers, and cyclists can ward off many common knee injuries by performing quadriceps exercises.
• If any leg exercise causes you pain, skip it or modify it by following our instructions. Some people try to protect their knees from injury by wrapping them in yards of bandages. We don’t love the idea of knee wraps unless you’re into some serious power lifting. A wrapped knee may mask a problem that needs immediate attention.
• To help protect your knees, make sure that you strengthen both your front and rear thigh muscles — the muscles that support your knee joint. Stretching is also helpful to keep all the muscles that surround the knee loose and limber.
• Sore wrists: Some people injure their wrist muscles by bending their wrists too much when they lift weights. To prevent wrist injuries, do regular wrist curls and reverse wrist curls.
• Lower back pain: If you have a history of back problems, you can just as easily throw out your back reaching for an apple in the fridge as you can pumping iron. But because the weight room constantly challenges your ability to stabilize your spine and maintain good form, it increases the risk of triggering an old injury — or developing a new one. Always take precautions for your lower back when you lift weights. One key preventive measure (that we mention repeatedly throughout this book) is to pull your abdominals inward. By tightening your abs, you create a natural girdle to support and protect your lower back.

Exercises that need spotters

Where you stand when spotting someone can make the difference between being helpful and being useless in an emergency. The following list offers spotting tips for a variety of common exercises:

• Bench press: Stand behind the bench with your hands above or underneath the bar but not touching it. When the lifter needs you, lean in and get a quick grip on the bar.
• Chest fly and dumbbell chest press: For these dumbbell exercises (and versions performed on an incline bench) place your hands close to the person’s wrists, not close to the weights. (You may see people spot underneath the elbows, which isn’t a crime but not as safe, either.) When spotting flat-bench chest exercises, kneel on one knee behind the bench and follow the movement with your hands. For incline exercises, you may find it more comfortable to stand with your knees bent.
• Barbell squat: Stand behind your spottee, and be prepared to assist at the hips or underneath the arms. Your spottee may not want to be spotted at the hips unless you happen to be that person’s significant other. If you’re squatting with a particularly heavy weight, you may want two spotters, one standing on either side of the bar.
• Pull-up and dip: Stand behind your spottee and offer assistance by holding his or her shins or waist and guiding them upward.
• Machine exercises: Spot at the bar or lever of the machine. For example, if you’re spotting someone on the cable row, stand slightly behind and to the side of your spottee. Grasp one of the handles and gently assist it the rest of the way. Never spot machine exercises by placing your hand underneath the weight stack. That’s a good way to get a squashed hand!

The do’s and don’ts of spotting

When the time comes that you’re in the gym and someone calls on you to help them with a few exercises, remember the do’s and don’ts of being a responsible spotter.

• Don’t impose a lift-or-die mentality upon your lifting partner. Just because he may have planned to complete five reps doesn’t mean that you should withhold assistance if he starts struggling after three.
  
• Don’t offer too much help too soon. This eagerness defeats the purpose of spotting, because the person only needs a spotter because they’re trying to test the edge of their limits. If you prevent that person from testing that edge, you’ll annoy the heck out of the person being spotted.
  
• Don’t lean so close to your spottee that you impede or distract his movement. Bench-pressing isn’t enjoyable when someone’s face is directly over yours, and you can see up the person’s nose.
  
• Be a cheerleader! Now put your pom-poms away. You don’t have to jump up and do the splits, but people appreciate support — and may even lift more weight — if you offer enthusiastic encouragement: “You’re almost there!” or “It’s all you! You’ve got it!”

Being the spotter

When people recruit you as a spotter, you have a big responsibility to perform your job correctly. Be realistic. If you weigh 90 pounds soaking wet, don’t attempt to spot someone doing a 350-pound bench press. If you have any doubt you can pull it off, don’t take on the assignment. The moment that the lifter’s arms give out isn’t the moment to realize you’re out of your league. If you do accept the job, pay close attention so you’re ready at the precise moment your partner needs help. Step in to help on these situations:

• The weight stops moving for more than a split second and it’s immediately apparent that the person is no longer in control of the movement.
• The weight begins traveling in the wrong direction.
• The lifter screams, “HELP!”
• Your partner can’t complete a rep.

Briefing your spotter

Your spotter can be your friend or a training partner that you meet at the gym. If you don’t know anyone, you can usually ask a staff person who is working on the weight-training floor. If you work with a personal trainer, she’ll spot you. Regardless of who you choose, prepare your spotter for the mission ahead:

• Explain how many repetitions you’re aiming to complete. Think about how many reps you think that you can do before you’ll need the spotter’s assistance. Be honest! If you think that you may need a spot on the sixth repetition, say so. This way, your spotter can start paying extra close attention around the fourth rep.
• Make it clear to your spotter whether you need help lifting the bar off the rack or getting the dumbbells into position.
  
• Set up a specific plan. Will the spotter help you on the count of three or after the count of three? Tiny misunderstandings can lead to big injuries.
  
• Offer your gratitude both before and after your set. Don’t forget to tell your spotter thank you. An attitude of gratitude makes you a reputable person in the gym.

The Art of Spotting

A spotter is someone who stands close by you when you’re lifting weights. This person is ready to grab your weights in case your muscles give out. The spotter can be your lifting partner that you go to the gym with or a stranger in the gym that you enlist for one or two exercises. Going to the gym with a friend is a good way to hold each other accountable. You can spot each other during lifting, and while you rest in between repetitions, your partner can perform the same exercise. Friends can encourage you in the last few reps, and keep you motivated. Your well-known lifting buddy also knows what you’re capable of and when you’ve had enough. If you’re in the gym lifting weights alone, you may not need a spotter hovering over you for every free weight exercise because you may feel smothered, as if your mom is chaperoning you on a date. But do call on a spotter when you’re alone and doing the following:

• Trying an exercise for the first time. Even if you’re not lifting significant weight, the weights may wobble when you perform a new movement. A spotter gently guides you through the motion until you have the confidence and the muscle memory to do it yourself.
• Attempting a heavier weight than usual. If you’ve never bench-pressed 100 pounds, try the exercise first in the presence of a spotter. The moment the bar comes crashing down on your chest isn’t a good time to find out you weren’t ready for the lift (or the time to try gasping for air to yell for help). Lifting heavy weights without a spotter is a lot like a trapeze artist working without a safety net. You may be fine the first nine times, but the tenth time. . . .
• Wanting to eke out extra reps. Sometimes you’re just not sure whether you have one more repetition in you. If you have a spotter, the repetition is worth trying (there’s no danger in trying). A spotter also can help you with machine exercises and assist you, for instance, on the last few inches of a heavy leg curl or arm curl.

Weight machine safety tips

One of the selling points of weight machines is that they’re safer than free weights. And it’s true — you’re in no danger of being crushed by a 100-pound barbell. The way that machines create a safer environment is that they put your body in the correct position and direct the movement pattern. Still, if you’re not careful, you can injure yourself.

Follow these safety tips to keep yourself (and others) out of harm’s way:

• Custom fit each machine. Some machines require a single adjustment, such as the seat height. Others require two or more adjustments: For instance, with some versions of the leg extension machine exercise, , you have to adjust the back rest as well as the leg bar. Don’t worry; you don’t need a mechanic’s license to adapt these machines to your body. Usually, you just pull a pin out of the hole, lower or raise the seat, and then put the pin back in place. Some machines are so simple to adjust that they don’t even involve a pin. With practice, fitting the machine to your body becomes second nature. Don’t get lazy about making adjustments. Using a weight machine that doesn’t fit your body is like driving a car while sitting in the back seat: uncomfortable, if not downright dangerous. When you strain to reach a handle or sit with your knees digging into your chest, you’re at risk for pulling a muscle or wrenching a joint. After you make an adjustment, jiggle the seat or the backrest to make sure that you’ve locked it securely in place. You don’t want the seat to drop suddenly to the floor with you on it.
• Watch your fingers. Occasionally, a machine’s weight stack gets stuck in midair. Don’t try to rectify the situation yourself by fiddling with the plates. Instead, call a staff member for help. We once saw a gym member try to fix a weight stack himself. The stack came crashing down, sandwiching his fingers between the weight plates. We’ve seen other people get clumps of hair caught in the stacks, and even one guy got his genitals stuck between the weight plates. We don’t know the details and don’t want to, but we did hear the story from a reliable equipment dealer who witnessed the ordeal.
• Buckle up. If a machine has a seat belt, use it. The belts are there for a reason. Use them! The seat belt prevents you from wasting muscle power squirming around to stay in place as you move the bar or lever of the machine. You’re most likely to find seat belts on older models of the inner/outer thigh, pullover, seated leg curl, and triceps dip machines.
• Don’t invent new uses for the machinery. You wouldn’t use your favorite sweater to dust the house, right? You wouldn’t use your television as a step-stool to reach the top cupboard. So don’t use a chest machine to strengthen your legs.

People are constantly inventing new — and unsafe — ways to use weight machines. For example: In order to release the chest bar on the vertical chest press machine, you must use your feet to press down on a bar near the floor. Well, we’ve seen people ignore the chest press altogether and use this floor bar to exercise their thighs or arms. If you dream up new uses for a machine, you may be asking for injuries.

Free weight safety tips

We know a police officer who arched his back so severely over years of bench-pressing that he finally was forced to retire. So keep in mind the following during your free weight workouts:

• Use proper form when you lift a weight off the rack. When you lift a dumbbell or barbell off a rack or when you lift a weight plate off a weight tree, always
• Bend from your knees — not from your hips.
• Get in close to the rack.
• Keep your arms bent.
• Pay attention when carrying weights around.
• Hold heavier weight plates with two hands.
• Keep the plates close to your body when you carry them.
• Watch where you’re going when you carry barbells.
• Making a U-turn while hauling around a 7-foot bar can cause serious destruction.
• Keep your elbows slightly bent when carrying a dumbbell in each hand.
• Use collars. A collar is a clamplike device that you use to secure a weight plate onto a bar. Often, when you perform a barbell exercise, the bar tilts slightly to one side; without a collar, the plates may slide right off and land on somebody’s toes or crash into the mirrors on the wall. We know one woman who was knocked unconscious when a collar flew off a guy’s weight bar and hit her in the head.
• Don’t drop weights on the floor. After you complete a dumbbell exercise on a bench (such as the chest fly or dumbbell chest press):
• Bring the weights to your chest.
• Gently rock yourself up into a sitting position.
• Some people simply let go of the weights, which isn’t only unnerving to the other gym members but also unsafe because they can land anywhere, roll, and create hazards for others. Weights always need to be controlled.
• Safely return weights to the rack. When you finish using dumbbells, barbells, or weight plates, don’t just lean straight over with locked knees and plunk the weights back on the rack.
• Bend your knees.
• Pull your abdominals in.
• Hold the weights close to your body before you release them.

Be careful not to smash your fingers when placing the weights back on the rack. We’ve done that. Ouch!

Resting your muscles

You can lift weights on consecutive days — just don’t exercise the same muscle two days in a row. Forty-eight hours is usually the ideal waiting period before exercising the same muscle group again. Lifting weights tears apart your muscle cells. Your muscles need a day to rest and repair so they come back even stronger.
If you ignore this rule, weight lifting may make you weaker rather than stronger. At the very least, your muscles feel too tired to perform at peak operating levels.

Cooling down

If you’ve done a fairly fast-paced weight workout, complete the workout with five minutes of slow aerobic exercise. The aerobic cool-down gives your pulse, blood pressure, and breathing a chance to slow down before you hit the showers. If you’ve been lifting weights at more of a plodding pace, with plenty of rest between sets, a few minutes of stretching suffices as a cool-down. Ending your workout with an easy set also helps you cool down.

Signs and symptoms of dehydration

Drink at least two 8-ounce glasses of water before starting your weight lifting routine and two–four glasses while working out. In order to move your muscles, you need water. Muscle is considered an active tissue and water is found in the highest concentrations in active tissue. Your muscles are 72 percent water. If your body is only slightly dehydrated, your performance will decline.
Signs and symptoms of dehydration include the following:

• Dry mouth
• Fatigue
• Loss of appetite
• Lightheadedness
• Headache
• Dry cough
• Dark yellow urine

Weight training proper form

In addition to heeding the general safety tips we present here, be sure to follow the specific tips we give you for each exercise. Even subtle form mistakes, such as overarching your back or cocking your wrist the wrong way, can lead to injury.
The main goal is to adjust your body so that when you move you don’t place any undue strain on any of your joints or muscles. It’s important that you understand that form is everything in weight lifting. Poor form ultimately leads to injuries.

Before you start building muscle, you need to establish correct form and balance — and especially before you add more weight. When you start using heavy poundage, bad form ultimately leads to injuries to muscles and joints. Don’t get discouraged because form adjustment is something all weight lifters must do. If you start with bad form, you carry that form forward, until you find out the hard way that you’ve been moving incorrectly. Old habits are hard to break!
Follow these tips:

• Don’t jerk or bounce any weight around.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help while you’re in the gym.
• Ask gym employees for help if you’re having trouble with certain exercises. Staff is usually helpful and answers any questions you may have.
• Follow a beginners’ weight lifting routine consistently for two to three months before moving on to more challenging exercises. Be patient, you’ll eventually start to pile on weight plates; but for now, think form and balance.

You have to train your neuromuscular system before you start increasing muscle tone and size. In other words, you need to improve the connection between your brain and your body so that more muscle fibers will fire with each contraction. This process of developing muscular control simply takes time. Star quarterbacks weren’t born throwing touchdown passes in the Super Bowl. Excellent form took many, many years of disciplined practice and training to develop that level of skill and expertise. Training takes time.

Breathing Properly during Weight Training

Breathing is often the most overlooked and least understood component of weight training. If you’re a competitive lifter, you probably already know that your breathing can either make you or break you come contest time. We’re not suggesting that you’re a competitive or powerlifter, but we also don’t suggest inhaling and exhaling with the gusto of a Lamaze student. Relaxed breathing while exercising is the best technique. Don’t hold your breath either.

Lifting weights temporarily causes your blood pressure to shoot up, which normally isn’t a problem. But when you hold your breath, your blood pressure rises even higher — and then suddenly comes crashing down. Holding your breath creates intra-thoracic pressure — pressure in the chest cavity —that stops the circulation of blood from your muscles, but can increase blood pressure. When you relax, the muscle relaxes, the blood begins to flow again, and your blood pressure drops. This drastic drop may cause you to pass out and drop your weight. And if you have a heart condition, you could be in serious jeopardy.

Starting with lighter weights

If you’re planning to do more than one set of an exercise, start by performing eight to ten repetitions with a light weight. A warm-up set is like a dress rehearsal for the real thing — a way of reminding your muscles to hit their marks when you go live. Even monstrous bodybuilders do warm-up sets. Sometimes you’ll see a human hunk of muscle bench-pressing with just the 45-pound bar. Just as you’re thinking, “What a wimp,” he piles on so many weight plates that the bar starts groaning. Then you realize that the first set was just his warm-up.

If you get too cocky and head straight for the heavy weights, you risk injuring yourself. With weights that are too heavy for you, you’re playing with some risky behaviors.

• Losing control of the weight
• Dropping the weight on yourself or on someone else
• Straining so hard to lift the weight that you tear a muscle
• Ending up so sore that you can barely lift your feet up high enough to climb stairs.

One or a combination of these accidents can cause a lapse in your workout as you may have to take time off to recover. Be smart and start with lighter weights — weights that you can lift for more reps before you reach fatigue. Then challenge your body by increasing the weight over time. A personal trainer at the gym can also help you target a starting weight for your repetitions.

Lifting weights too quickly doesn’t challenge muscles effectively and is a pretty reliable way to injure yourself. When you’re pressing, pushing, lifting, or extending at the speed of a greyhound, you can’t stop mid-rep if weight plates come loose, you’re positioned incorrectly, or something just doesn’t feel right. So take at least two seconds to lift a weight and two to four seconds to lower it. Some experts feel that you should move even slower than that. If you’re banging and clanging, slow down your pace.

Warming up before you lift

Before you start your training session, warm up your body with at least five minutes of easy aerobic exercise (see below for suggestions). Your warm-up increases circulation to and the temperature of your working muscles, making them more pliable and less susceptible to injury. Your warm-up also lubricates your joints. The pumping action of your bones at the joints stimulates the release of synovial fluid, which bathes your joint and keeps it moving smoothly, as if you’re oiling a mechanical joint. If you have a particularly heavy-weight workout planned, warm up for ten minutes. Warm up your muscles by using Active isolated stretching (AI). AI involves tightening the muscle opposite to the one that you’re planning to stretch and then stretching the target muscle for two seconds. You repeat this process 8 to 12 times before going on to the next stretch.
Walking, jogging, stairclimbing, and stationary biking are also excellent aerobic warm-up activities for the muscles south of your waistline. But to prepare your upper body muscles, you need to add extra arm movements to these activities.

• Vigorously swing your arms as you walk, jog, or use the stairclimber.
• When you ride the stationary bike, gently roll your shoulders, circle your arms, and reach across the center of your body.
• Use an aerobic machine that exercises your entire body, such as a rower, cross-country ski machine, or stationary bike with arm handles. (Many gyms have the Cybex Upper Body Ergometer [UBE]; ask a trainer where you can find the UBE.)

Weight Training Safety

Forget what your Grandma told you. Truth is — there’s nothing inherently unsafe about weight machines or barbells. It’s what you do with these contraptions that can leave you with smashed toes, ripped hamstrings, and torn tendons. If you pay attention, use proper form, and don’t get too macho about how much weight you lift, you can go for years without even a minor injury. In fact, one of the best reasons to lift weights in the first place is to reduce your risk of injury in daily life by strengthening your muscles and bones.
Follow the safety tips in this chapter, and you’ll walk out of the weight room the same way you entered it: in one piece and under your own power. We said that weight training is safe and that you can go a lifetime without a minor injury, but with that said, you may feel occasional muscle soreness —especially if you’re new to the game or haven’t worked out in a while. A little bit of post-workout soreness is okay; chances are, you’ll feel tightness or achiness 24 to 48 hours after your workout, rather than right away. (This postponed period is called Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, for those of you who feel more comfortable when your pain has a name.) But there are ways to reduce your amount of discomfort so you can be a normal, functioning human being after your workout. The following guidelines can help you keep this soreness to a minimum.