Even though working out is healthy for both your mind, body and self confidence, it’s important to take care when doing so. The last thing you want is to injure yourself and set yourself back when it comes to working out or taking part in a local sports club for example.
If you’re looking to spend more time on your body this year through workouts and sports, here are a few tips to help look after the body safely while doing so.
Make Sure To Warm Up And Warm Down
It’s highly important that you’re warming up and warming down when it comes to exercise. The reason for this is that you could likely do yourself more injury by not doing either. This is also true for low impact exercises as they can still cause injuries.
Warming up is important because it helps prevent injuries, especially as your body is going from no exercise to somewhat intense exercise. You will also find that warming up adequately will improve your exercise performance due to muscles being more flexible and ready to go.
Warming down is useful to help stretch out the muscles and gradually bring your body back down to normality, rather than just ceasing exercise completely. Ceasing exercise completely can lead to more muscle aching the next day, so it is well worth going to the effort of a little cooling down before ending your sessions.
Protect Your Mouth With A Mouthguard
If you’re involved in some intense and heavy-impact sports like rugby for example or boxing. Anything really that could potentially cause damage to your face, then it’s worth protecting your mouth with a mouthguard.
For those that don’t wear these protective guards, will likely find they need to take a trip to their local dentists as a result of a broken or knocked-out tooth. It’s always good to take precautions when it comes to playing any type of sports.
Stay Hydrated
Keeping hydrated is definitely something you want to be proactive with, especially when you’re working out. By not staying hydrated, you’re more likely to cause yourself injury or a fainting spell due to a lack of fluid in the body.
Hydration is vitally important because dehydration can cause seizures, swelling on the brain, kidney failure, shock, coma and even death. When you’re exercising in the heat, especially, you need to take care to keep drinking fluids. Sometimes you do not realise how dehydrated you are under these circumstances because our thirst mechanism is a little unevolved, therefore we are often dehydrated before we even feel thirsty.
Signs of dehydration can include thirst, dizziness and light headedness. Be sure to never ignore these signs.
Whether it’s water, a flavoured energy drink or a protein shake, make sure you’re keeping yourself hydrated when looking after your body during a workout.
Be Wary Of Pushing Your Body Too Much
While it’s good to push your body to its limits, you want to be aware of where those limits lie so that you don’t go past them. There’s nothing worse than pushing yourself too far and injuring yourself in the process.
Know when your body is telling you to stop and listen to it. As you get more adept at exercising, you will learn to listen to your body and know the difference between when your body wants to stop and when you’re just not feeling like exercising.
With that being said, know where your limits are and gradually push your body over time, rather than trying to do it all at once. If you feel like a set is too much or that extra trip to the gym is a trip too much for the week, then listen to your body.
Wear The Right Attire To Prevent Injuries
It’s important that what you wear is appropriate for the type of workout or exercise you’re doing. Certain sportswear is going to be more appropriate than others, so it’s good to dress in order to prevent injuries from occurring.
If you have breasts, then be sure to wear a good quality sports bra. Not paying attention to this can cause pulled ligaments and dropping breast over time from the continual pressure of the pulling and bouncing around. You may not notice this when you’re young, or even at the time, but as you age this type of damage can become a lot more noticeable.
Avoid wearing any of your typical loungewear, despite it being comfortable, it’s not the best for working out.
Looking after your body is important, especially during a workout so use these tips to help!
Eat The Right Diet
When working out, or doing any intense exercise, your diet is always going to be a crucial part of how successful you are going to be. Eating lots of anti inflammatory, plant based foods is a great way to fuel your workouts, lose weight and build muscle. Eat lots of spicy foods too as they are known to increase fat burning and weight loss.
There are many athletes now adopting this way of eating and getting some of their best times ever, so what does this tell you about the power of plants?
The plant based diet directly affects fitness due to a few reasons. These include:-
- ANTI-INFLAMMATORY BENEFITS – Meat and dairy are acidic but plants are alkaline, therefore eating a plant based diet will contribute to less chronic inflammation, less inflammation of muscles after exercise, and ultimately a faster recovery time.
- HIGHER FITNESS LEVELS – The plant based diet in general contributes to higher fitness.
- ENDURANCE – You will have much higher endurance from eating plants over animals. You will feel like a more superhuman version of yourself due to the high antioxidant and nutrient levels of this diet. You are literally feeding yourself electric foods that are charging your body up.
- FASTER RECOVERY – You’ll find you have way less fatigue during and after exercise on the plant based lifestyle due to the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects of plant.
Thanks for visiting ZestForever today!
We hope you enjoy our content and find it useful for your exercise plans. Be sure to follow our advice to stay in tip top shape and injury free during your workouts.
