How to Prevent Injury: Injury-Preventing, Joint-Friendly, Safe Fitness

Many people are concerned about injury, especially if they’ve experienced it before. Being injured means not being able to do the things you physically enjoy doing, and it can be a powerful feeling that dissuades us from doing any exercise at all. But the only way to prevent injury is to exercise – you just need to make sure you’re doing the right type of low-impact, muscle-building exercises that have a low-risk of injury and help to injury-proof your body in the process.

This informative blog includes:

1. Common Issues Related to Injury-Prevention & Exercise
2. Challenges of Avoiding Injury
3. How to exercise in a way to prevent injury
4. How can Man Flow Yoga help?

Common Injury-Prevention Issues

• Recurring injury.
• Had an injury for a while, want to be careful and make sure you don’t repeat.
• PT was boring, want something more engaging but also effective.
• Want to avoid traditional, high-impact exercise that can cause injury or further aggravate existing injuries.

Challenges of Avoiding Injury

• Avoiding exercise for fear of getting injured again. Not doing exercises that we have bad experiences with, even if those exercises are beneficial if practiced correctly.
• Not understanding the root cause of our injuries. We often use bandaid solutions to “fix” injuries, instead of addressing the muscular imbalances, weakness, and lack of flexibility that led to the injury in the first place.
• Improper training. Not doing the exercises that help with injury-prevention, and instead focusing on traditional, high-impact exercise like running, cardio, or high-intensity resistance training.

How To Prevent Injury

• Do exercises that prevent injury. Address common weaknesses and imbalances of the modern sedentary man (people who sit a lot and don’t move as often as nomads or farmers).
• Choose low-impact over high-impact forms of fitness. You can still build muscle, manage your weight, and improve the way you feel throughout the day without doing high-impact, cardio-focused exercise.
• Move more often throughout the day. Get into the habit of stretching or taking quick walks every hour or so. Stand up at your desk, take your phone calls while walking, etc.
• Spend more time on flexibility, mobility, core strength, and balance. Our muscles get tight when we are inactive, and our core strength decreases when we sit. It’s important that we spend time addressing these weaknesses in order to prevent injury and make ourselves strong for the long run.
• Correct improper movement patterns. Injuries are sometimes unavoidable, but many exercise-related injuries can be prevented by correcting technique and ensuring you are using the proper muscles to complete a given exercise. This requires slowing things down and making sure you are moving correctly & efficiently.

How Man Flow Yoga helps

• The Strength Foundations Course is a program I built to address common injuries. It strengthens muscles that are often weak and lack flexibility, especially in people who have had injuries in the past or spend a lot of time sitting at a desk. It’s also a low-impact program that builds muscle, strength, and increases flexibility. It’s beginner-friendly and requires no flexibility. 30-40 minutes per workout, recommended minimum 3 times per week.
• Bulletproof Your Back – If your goal is to work specifically on your spine, and you don’t have more than 10-20 minutes per day, you can also start with this program. It focuses on your spine, but is actually a full-body program. Beginner-friendly, no flexibility or yoga experience required.
• Which “path” is right for you? We’ve developed “paths” at Man Flow Yoga to help you choose programs and workouts specific to your needs and challenges. People interested in injury-prevention often identify with one or more of the following: (1) Injury-Prevention & Rehab, (2) Low-Impact Fitness, or (3) At Home Yoga for Physical Training.

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