Injury Prevention Tips for a Safe Start to Your Fitness Journey!

If you are starting off with a new exercise routine, we want to make sure you are starting really slow. If your goal is to bench press a hundred pounds, you want to start with zero weight or just the weight of the bar to ensure that you are starting slow and really just going through the motions. If your goal is to run three miles, then we want to make sure that you are just doing a slow walk first and gradually building up to a run until you build up getting into longer distances. As you get started in your new activity, we want to make sure that you are warming up appropriately beforehand. So if you are going to go golfing, we would recommend you take 10 or 20 golf swings before you go out. If you are going to play basketball, we would recommend that you start on jumping jacks first. If you are going to go swimming, we would recommend doing some arm circles. We want to make sure that your warm-up activity is similar to the activity that you are going to do so that you get blood flow into the muscles that you want to use for your sport or activity. Stretching is another key to injury prevention. You can stretch before your exercise, but we want to keep the stretches before activities light so you do not overdo it before you start. We recommend waiting until after you are done with your sport or your exercise to do the deeper stretches. If you do happen to tweak something during exercise, like a shoulder, neck or back, it is a good idea to make sure that you are stopping as quickly as possible, so you do not make it worse. Then we recommend scheduling a chiropractic examination, so we can make sure that we are correcting any little injuries before they become big injuries. If you are interested in scheduling an appointment for chiropractic care, please visit our website at https://chiro.kauffmanchiropractic.com/scheduling-options/