If you’re new to weight training, follow this advice to avoid injury

Warm up properly

Always warm up properly before doing any serious exercise (Warm-up, Stretching, Foam rolling). This will help you to stay injury free.



Stop if it hurts  
If you feel pain at any time during your workout, stop immediately. The saying ‘no pain, no gain’ is popular in with old-school PE teachers who don’t know what they’re talking about. Working through pain could do serious damage to muscles, joints or tendons.



Watch your form
Maintain perfect form for every repetition of every exercise. Each exercise in this book comes with detailed notes on form. If you don’t have good form you won’t get the full benefit of the exercise and may injure yourself.



Start light
Pick a weight you can manage easily the first time you perform any lifting exercise. This way you can concentrate on performing the exercise perfectly, and then you can build up the weight over time



Brace your core
You can help to stabilise your body and reduce your injury risk by engaging your core during an exercise.To do this, start by ensuring that you are standing or sitting up straight with your hips in line with your torso. Now imagine that someone is about to punch you in the stomach and you have to tense your abdominal muscles to take the blow. You need to maintain that contraction throughout the move to protect your lower back from muscle strains.




Keep training
For more advice on training, as well as detailed workouts and eating plans, see TO BE ATHLETE.C0M every DAY.