How To Stay Away From Injuries After A Gym Break
There are a few tips that can help you stay away from injuries when you resume your workouts after a long break. Check them out!
For several weeks you stayed at home, maybe because you wanted to protect yourself from getting sick or perhaps because you were waiting for your injuries to heal.
But now, it’s the time to get back to the gym, and you’re pretty excited to restart your routine.
The gym is your favorite place to spend your free time and dumbbells your best friend.
But before you get back to lifting the same weights you did before you took a break, you should have a plan for helping your body adjust to gym workouts after a hiatus.
After weeks or even months of skipping your usual training routine, you need to be patient and gradually engage in working out, otherwise, you’d hurt yourself.
Most people injure themselves when they rush the process of returning to their routine because they push their bodies too hard and try to bounce back too fast.
It takes your body around three weeks to lose the muscle strength you worked so hard to build for months, and less than two weeks to lose part of your cardio fitness.
But your body is a fantastic machine and can adapt to a new training regimen, as long as you slowly rebuild its endurance and strength.
How To Stay Away From Injuries In The Gym
Here is how to keep injuries at bay when getting back to the gym after a long break:
1. Lower The Weight
If you continued to train at home during your break, even if you skipped weights and used your body weight or resistance bands, you probably haven’t lost much muscle, and you can get back to your regular routine in a couple of weeks.
But even so, you shouldn’t start with the same amount from the first time you hit the gym. Lower the amount of weight and allow your body to accommodate.
Supposing you didn’t lose too much of your strength and muscle, chances are the weights you once used not to feel heavier.
Your priority is to prevent injuries, so don’t put too much strain on your body, and focus on performing the exercises correctly.
After a couple of workouts, you’ll probably be able to go back to lifting the weight you lifted before taking a break. And in time you can even increase it.
2. Scale Back The Frequency
No matter if you worked out at home or spent your days on the couch, your body needs time to adjust to the strenuous exercises training in a gym implies.
Five days working out at home don’t equal five days working out in the gym.
If you left the gym more than a couple of months ago, don’t dive into six days of training routine because you’ll exhaust your body and injure your muscles and joints.
This approach can backfire and make it more challenging for your body to bounce back to its initial strength.
Restart your training routine by scaling back the frequency of gym visits in the beginning and allow your body to rest. After a month you can slowly increase the number of times you work out.
3. Do Fewer Exercises
Your usual training session may’ve included 6 sets of 4 reps each. But there’s a good chance your body to not handle so many sets or repetitions now. And you may even feel how your muscles burn after the first 3 exercises.
After a gym break, less is more because your body feels like a rookie again. Your first workouts should include only staple exercises like bench presses, deadlifts, and squats, combined with cardio to improve your fitness.
Call it a day after 4 exercises and go back to a warm bath and some rest.
This isn’t the right moment to hammer your body with dozens of complex movements. As your muscles and joints slowly adjust to the effort, you can increase the number of sets and reps and go back to your previous routine.
4. Expect To Feel Sore For Days Or Even Weeks
It’s normal for your muscles to get sore after a change in activity level. You spent so much time doing nothing else than walking around; your body forgot how it feels to engage in strenuous activities.
But it’s a good thing that your muscles are aching because it’s a sign you had a practical training session and stimulated your muscles.
Muscle soreness can peak from 24 to 48 hours after a workout session, and during the first weeks, it can feel unbearable.
You can try a CBD product like Sour Diesel to alleviate some of the discomfort. Your body is unique so you must monitor your soreness and determine when it’s best to use CBD products to prevent the discomfort from interfering with your daily activities.
Also, adjust the workout intensity according to the post-training effects, you experience.
When you no longer feel your muscles aching after working out, you can increase the intensity and add extra weights.
Don’t progress when you don’t feel comfortable because you might injure your joints and muscles.
5. Get Some Rest
Your body needs rest to recover and the tissue to heal. But because you missed a couple of months of training, you may feel you need to compensate and undo the loss of strength and fitness and cut out your rest to work more in the gym.
Don’t assume that a short rest time is as effective as an eight-hour night sleep and a day off from working out. You don’t have to keep your heart rate elevated to grow back your cardio level.
In fact, not allowing your body to rest adequately can interfere with your workout results.
Be realistic about your expectations. Don’t assume that you need to start from zero with your training, but on the other end of the spectrum, don’t think you can go back to your old regimen. Any of these mindsets is unrealistic and prevents you from evolving.
Be patient with your body because it needs time to work back up and rebuild its strength and resistance. You’ll exceed your old records in no time and be proud of your efforts.
Hopefully, these simple tips will help you stay away from injuries when you get back to working out after a break.
