Gyms seem to be relatively safe places, we frequent them often and walk out



the front doors without any complaints other then the normal soreness brought on

by a hard workout.

But unfortunately for some of us we actually do not make it out of the gym

uninjured, usually the injuries are nothing serious but can still really kill

our workouts. Now the most common gym injuries are not serious but they still

keep us from what we love. Here is a brief description of the most common

injuries and how you can prevent them.

Muscle Strain

The first injury is perhaps the most common injury seen in the gym, it is a

muscle strain, also know as a muscle tear. The thing to remember hear is that

there are different degrees of strains, you can have level one, two or three,

three being a complete tear of the muscle and the most serious. Level one strain

is a very minor over stretching of the muscle leading to slight swelling in the

area and very minor discomfort. Level two is more severe and usually is a severe

strain with a tear but not a complete tear of the muscle itself. There will be

severe swelling and soreness and pain will be elicited during contraction of the

affected muscle. Now all of the levels can keep you out of the gym and all will

take time to recover from, obviously the higher the level the longer the

recovery time. The standard treatment is rest and physical therapy such as

massage or physiotherapy.

The best way to try and prevent a muscle strain is to do a warm up set for each

exercise to help warm up the muscle fibers and the surrounding connecting

tissues. Also technique plays a key role when lifting weights, if you a putting

you muscles under high levels of stress in weird angles this will increase the

chances of a strain. Now the most common way muscle strain occur is when people

try to lift more weight then they are comfortable with and swing the weights

around, this can obviously be corrected by lifting only what you are capable of

lifting.

The Other most common gym injury is a group of conditions, these conditions are

inflammatory conditions brought on by repetitive strain such as a workout

routing. These conditions are hard to avoid as they come about for most of us as

a direct result of going to the gym regularly and putting our bodies under

stress repeatedly.

Tendinitis

The first in this group is tendinitis which is a very basic condition it is a

inflammation of a tendon, the most common areas affected are the elbows and the

knees. When it occurs in the the tendons of the wrist flexors it is called

golfers elbow, when it occurs in the wrist extensors it is called tennis elbow.

A very easy test to perform to check for golfers elbow is to put your finger

tips under the edge of a table then try to push the table up while keeping your

fingers under the edge, this will cause your wrist flexors to contract and if

there is any tendinitis in the flexor tendons you will get a pain on the inside

of your elbow. Now to test for tennis elbow just perform the same thing but this

time put the back of your hand under the table and try to lift the table with

the back of your hand. This will cause the wrist extensors to contract and if

tendinitis is present you will feel a pain on the outside of the elbow.

Bursitis

Now the other injury in this group is called bursitis. Bursitis is an

inflammation of the bursa, the bursa is a fluid filled sac that lies between

tendons, ligaments and bones or basically anywhere that a soft tissue might rub

against a hard surface such as bone. The sole purpose of the bursa is to reduce

friction to help elicit fluid pain free movement, but sometimes due to over use

and repetitive strain the bursa gets inflamed and causes pain, this is called

busitis. It is basically the same thing as tendinitis but is the bursa instead

of the tendon that is inflamed. This group of injuries can be absolutely

devastating to a workout routine and can keep someone from the gym for weeks and

may even return once the workouts re sum. The main way to avoid this group of

injuries is to vary you training routine, try not to do the exact same exercises

all the time, and try not to use heavy heavy weight all the time. You can even

take a week and do lighter weights with more reps or even through in a few days

off every couple of weeks, do these tips and you should be able to avoid this

group of inflammatory injuries..

All the injuries mentioned in this article are completely preventable and can be

avoided with the proper steps, so take the time and you can help to avoid down

time from the gym due to preventable injuries.

Please take the time to read more about injuries and health at

http://www.efitnessplace.com