A recent study has shown an alarming rise of 50% in the last 18 years in the number of weight-training injuries.
More than 970,000 weight-training related injuries were treated in US hospital emergency departments. This report which was published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, showed that 90% of these injuries were caused by free weights, with the most common injury being caused by dropping the weight on a person (65%).
The study also revealed that while the highest injuries occured among males, there was a larger increase in the incidence of injury among females. This is most likely due to it becoming much more popular for females to do weight training then some years ago.
This research shows that although weight training is benificial to health, caution must be taken to reduce the risk of injury.
The things you can do to reduce the risks are to have a warm up and stretch before lifting weights. If you're new to weight training, ensure you start on the resistance machines until you get used to the movement of each exercise and are shown the correct techinque by a fitness professional, rather then Jim your mate! Once you have mastered the movements then you can move onto free weights. Again ensure you are shown correct technique and form by a fitness professional.
Remember that the weight you can lift on the machines will be less with free weights due to the fact that the machines give you some support compared with free weights.
Lastly if you're going heavy with free weights on exercises such as bench press it's wise to have a spotter (a person who can keep an eye on you and can take the weight from you if you reach muscle failure).
Enjoy your work outs and here's to injury free weight training.
If anyone needs some more advice regarding this or any other exercise topic- drop me a line.
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