So getting exercise right will hugely reduce your injury risk. I see people getting injured for many reasons: they might not be strong enough, fit enough, they’re doing too much, they’re spiking their training load or their training is too repetitive.
In this blog we’re going to dive into how you can take a well-rounded approach in these three areas to significantly reduce the risk of injuries:
- Load management
- Strength training
- Cardiovascular training
Load Management
Load is essentially the stress you put through your body when you’re exercising, and is made up of your training volume, intensity, frequency, and recovery. The core idea is to strike a balance between stressing your body enough to trigger positive adaptations and avoiding overloading it, which can lead to injuries.
What’s the biggest cause of injury? Training at a level of load that you’re not able to tolerate.
But how do we get to tolerate these higher levels of training load?
Well it’s by progressively increasing the load that we put on our body at an incremental rate so we get positive training adaptions as opposed to injuries.
How much is a “the right amount” to increase your load by? Well that is a hard question, and not something that has a one size fits all approach. It needs to be individualised based on so many different factors.
A number that has been used to increase workload a lot is 10%. So each week looks 10% bigger than the previous week. Now research shows that this number isn’t any better than 9 or 11%, it’s just a good number to use.
And I will also use this from time to time, but there are certainly nuances that need to be considered. And this is where you need an individualised approach.
What’s the other huge thing to consider with load management?
Recovery.
Recovery is what allows all the adaption and tissue repair to occur.
If you’re not resting, you’re not recovering and you’re not going to get fitter or stronger.
So planning in your rest is just as important as planning your actual exercise.
Strength Training
Strength training is essential to not only reducing the risk of injury but also contributing to a healthier life with better life expectancy and improved levels of function.
After the age of 30 we naturally lose 3-5% of muscle mass per decade.
Now this doesn’t sound a lot but trust me after 2-3 decades this will have a huge impact on your quality of life.
And the best weight to offset this is resistance training.
So how does resistance training improve injury risk?
Well simply put, stronger your muscles, joints and connective tissue are, the better they are at producing and absorbing force.
So when you’re running and you have around 8 x your bodyweight going through your calf, it’s going to be able to cope with that a hell of a lot better if it’s stronger.
What are the scientifically proven benefits of resistance training:
- Improve muscle, joint and connective strength
- Improved bone health
- Improved balance
- Improved stress levels and mental health
- Improved immune system
- Improved perception of pain
- Improved cardiovascular benefits
Cardiovascular Training
There’s a significant role cardiovascular training plays in safeguarding your body from injury.
We know that the better our cardiovascular fitness, the better we can cope with the demands of our sport due to being less likely to become excessively overloaded.
This means we are less likely to be fatigued when playing sport.
And where do injuries generally occur?
When we are fatigued.
Again there is heaps of evidence to suggest that regular cardiovascular training will improve:
- Heart and lung health
- Joint health
- Weight management
- Nervous system function
Keep an eye out for our final blog where we will cover the one last surprising but key component that can massively increase your injury risk.
If you want to help with anything injury related then feel free to Book In and we can get you on the journey to becoming pain free again.
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