Designing a Balanced Strength Training Program: Injury Prevention with Premium Sports and Orthopedics

What offers benefits like strengthening bones, building muscle, and enhancing your performance? Strength training does. When you build muscle properly, you also aid your bones and improve your stamina. 

However, as is true of any exercise program, strength training comes with the risk of injury. When you work with the team at Premium Sports and Orthopedics, you minimize your injury risk. You can build core muscle, improve joint strength, and improve your overall health with a balanced strength training program.

Injury Prevention Starts with Balance

Your body is composed of three major structures: bones (206 to 213 of them), joints (360), and muscles (over 600). That complex system must work fluidly to ensure you move correctly, maintain mobility and balance, and avoid injury. When even one muscle group is weaker than another, havoc ensues. 

If you have weak back muscles and strong chest muscles, shoulder pain becomes a problem. Strong quads with weak calf muscles put your knees at risk of injury. Stability relies on balanced muscle strengthening programs. 

The minute one muscle is stronger than another, pain is an issue. That pain can cause serious injuries and stop you from wanting to continue training. Worse, it can cause disabling injuries.

Safe Strength Training Programs Require a Strong Foundation

Strength training isn’t something you can dive into and hope for the best. You need a safe plan to follow. You need to follow these general guidelines.

• Build Muscle Gradually: As you work on core muscle strength, you need to do it gradually. All strength training programs need to be done gradually. You start small and become more intense as you gain muscle strength. If you try to start at an advanced level right from the start, you’re asking for injuries. 
• Mix Up the Muscle Groups Each Day: It’s also important that you mix up the exercise program to ensure that all muscle groups are worked on throughout the week. This ensures you are always building muscle strength and tone, but you’re given some muscles time to recover. 
• Rest Muscle Groups After Strength Training Sessions: That’s important, too. You need to take time off after strength training sessions. Your muscle fibers need time to repair and grow.
• Get Enough Sleep: Part of resting your muscles requires a good night’s sleep. Muscles repair while your body is dormant and relaxed. This means the majority of muscle repair happens when you sleep.
• Eat a Healthy Diet: Fuel your body with whole grains, lean protein, calcium-rich foods, and fruits and vegetables. Avoid processed, sugary snacks and meals.
• Listen to Your Body’s Warning Signs: There is always going to be delayed onset muscle soreness or DOMS after a workout. It’s normal. What’s not normal are sharp, non-ending, or snapping pains that occur during a workout. If you feel something is wrong, stop and tell your physical therapist or doctor.

Foundational Movement Patterns for Improving Muscle Tone

Before tackling any strength training program, a warm-up is essential. That gets your blood flowing and slowly increases your heart rate. Never jump right into the exercises. Once you’ve warmed up, your strength training program should include these fundamental movement patterns.

• Horizontal and Vertical Pushing (Targets the chest, shoulders, and triceps)
• Horizontal and Vertical Pulling (Targets the back and biceps)
• Legs (Targets the calves, glutes, hamstrings, and quads)
• Core (Targets the abs, lower back, and obliques/sides of the torso)

As you do the different exercises for each pattern, you need to balance them. If you work on pushing exercises in the shoulders, you need to also do pulling exercises for the shoulders. Workouts must ensure the muscles are strengthened in tandem to prevent joint, ligament, and muscle injuries.

You also work on the different exercises in sets. If you’re doing overhead reaches with a weight, you’d do however many you’re instructed to do, rest, and repeat. After, you need to work the opposite, so instead of reaching overhead, you’d bend at the waist and lift your arm from the ground like you are rowing. Again, you’re working in sets and resting.

After you complete the session’s exercises, you don’t just pack up and go home. Just as you warmed up, you need to cool down. You need to slow your heart rate through more light cardio, static stretches, and even walking laps.

Avoid Injury by Following These Tips

Even with the most carefully planned strength training program, these common mistakes can increase your risk of injury.

• Trying to do too much too fast. – Focus on form over the amount of weight you’re lifting. Aim for a gradual progression.
• Ignoring your body. – If something feels wrong, stop and seek medical attention before you worsen a minor injury.
• Failing to stay hydrated. – When you’re working out and sweating, you’re losing water and essential minerals like sodium through that sweat. Make sure you’re drinking extra water or drinks like water with added electrolytes.
• Working out constantly and never taking a week off to recuperate. – Every couple of months, take a week off to give your body a full week to recover.
• Ignoring the proper form or stance. – Every exercise has a proper form or stance. If you’re not standing or positioned correctly, you increase your risk of injury.

Include an Expert in Strength Training to Prevent Injury

The best way to avoid muscle and joint injuries while strength training is to make sure you work with a sports and orthopedics specialist. Orthopedic specialists understand the musculoskeletal system and how your muscles and bones work together with every moment. They know the value of balance when it comes to injury prevention. 

Our experts at Premium Sports and Orthopedics help you learn the right stance and form for every exercise you do. We can also help with nutritional plans.

When you work with Premium Sports and Orthopedics, you work with a specialist in strength training. We offer electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) sessions for improved muscle tone. All you need is 20 minutes per session and about two sessions per week.

EMS ensures every movement helps strengthen the targeted muscles by sending electrical signals to that muscle group. That electric impulse makes the muscles contract efficiently, so you feel more of a workout faster than you would with a traditional workout. Your fitness trainer can focus on your exact form during a movement to ensure you’re avoiding missteps that can cause injury.

Prevent injury while strengthening muscles by calling (559) 813-3005 or by making an appointment with Premium Sports and Orthopedics using the online scheduler.