How Can I Prevent Common Exercise Injuries?

Ease into your goal.

Whether you’re a weekend warrior aiming to stay active or a high-level athlete chasing a championship, goals take time to achieve.

“If a person doesn’t take time to build up to longer workouts or higher levels of intensity, their body won’t be ready to handle the demand, and that can cause injury,” Granito says.

For example, when planning to run a race, consider how far you’ve run before and your overall cardiovascular fitness. If 3 miles is the furthest you’ve ever run, choose a shorter race as your first goal. Or realistically calculate how to gradually build from 3 miles to a longer distance. If you simply want to start playing basketball or pickleball on the weekends, start with shorter or fewer games.

Warm up and cool down.

Before every workout, you have to get your body ready. In particular, powerful, explosive movements such as jumps and sprints can cause injury if tissues are not warm and elastic.

“Warming up increases blood flow, and blood flow makes tissues more elastic,” Granito says. “Instead of a time-based guideline for a warm-up, I recommend warming up until you start to sweat.”

Before beginning a workout, he has athletes:

1. Bike for 5 minutes to begin to sweat.
2. Perform some explosive movements such as skips, jumps, and lateral movements.
3. Stretch.

After activity, Granito recommends doing your warm-up routine in the opposite order to slowly bring your body back to pre-exercise levels.

Cross-training for injury prevention

Cross-training helps prevent overuse injuries in athletes who consistently put a lot of stress on a particular part of the body. For example, runners can bike to improve aerobic capacity without putting stress on the knees and ankles. Similarly, cyclists can swim, and throwing athletes can take a few days off from throwing to lift weights.

“In terms of mitigating injury risk, cross-training is a great way to take stress off of the parts that you’re trying to rest while still making progress,” Granito says. “It’s especially helpful in people who really focus on one sport.”

Strengthen your core.

The core is the foundation of almost all athletic movement. “Most people think of core strength as just their abs. But the core is essentially everything from our knees to our nipples in the front and from the back of our knees to our shoulder blades in the back,” Granito says.

A weak core forces you to use other parts of your body with more force, which can cause an injury. Imagine a tennis player with a core that’s not strong enough to hit the ball forcefully. They may try to draw more power from their hips, shoulder, or elbow, which can hurt the joints or surrounding muscles and tendons.

Rest and recover.

When we exercise, we create tiny tears in our muscles. It’s important to allow those tissues to recover. Rest or low-level activity helps your muscles heal and allows your body to eliminate waste and byproducts created during exercise.

“If you don’t recover well from one day to the next, then your effectiveness the next day goes down. And if we continue that day after day, not recovering between workouts, you increase your injury risk,” he says.

A rest period doesn’t mean being completely inactive. You can do low-impact activities, such as walking and swimming, and incorporate stretching to prevent injury and increase flexibility. Good sleep habits and nutrition are also important to rest and recovery.