How A Weight Lifting Belt Helps Prevent Injuries
If you’ve tweaked your back recently, one thing that you can do, if you have a doctor’s approval, to protect your back while you still go to the gym and lift, is to wear a weight lifting belt. These belts will help your back to support itself and you will be at a lesser risk for injury by wearing the belt. But how does the belt actually work?
Lifting belts work by utilizing something known to scientists as inter-abdominal pressure. Normally your abdomen has a certain level of pressure in it. Normally you can increase this pressure yourself by sucking in your stomach and clenching your abs. What happens when you wear a belt is that the back of the belt keeps your back in strict alignment and doesn’t allow it to bow out backwards. The front of the belt meanwhile, is tightened and pushes your insides together, increasing inter-abdominal pressure.
In short, what increased inter-abdominal pressure does is it allows your spine something to rest itself against. This means the tiny stabilizer muscles in your back don’t have to work as hard and can relax, even if it’s just ever-so-slightly. This keeps your back in alignment and makes sure that you most likely won’t tweak it again.
However, it is important to note that a belt will not prevent all injuries. You will still have to maintain good form while you are lifting and engage your core. If you don’t you can still get injured even with a belt on. Or, even if you don’t get injured with a belt on, once you attempt to lift without one on you run and extremely high chance of getting injured.
Using a weight lifting belt is a great way to help protect your back and help present injuries to it heal faster. However, always make sure to use it right so you don’t end up getting even more injured down the road!
Avoid these top 5 gym mistakes
You may be making mistakes in the gym without even knowing it. These mistakes can hinder your progress and can even cause you to have injuries and unnecessary stiffness. But the good news is that you can avid such mistakes by simply identifying it and then by correcting it. We will look at the top 5 ones here and also how to correct it. Let's start!
1. Lifting too much weight
If you lift more weight than your body can handle, chances are you will either stretch a muscle or incur other injuries. Rather build up the weight load gradually as you get stronger.
2. Jerking while lifting weights
You should never jerk the weight, if you do so, chances are that you are also jerking your muscles around and that can really cause a major setback in your training due to injuries or stiffness. Always move the weight in a slow and controlled manner.
3. Not stretching
Not stretching after a workout is also one of the biggest mistakes that most people make. I know it is very temping to get out of the gym as soon as your challenging workout is done, but it is very important to stretch after your workout when your muscles are still warm.
4. Not warming up before exercise
Your muscles can't go from stationary to all out movement without any consequences. It is very important to start the exercise with a 5 minute workout and to take it slower in the beginning.
5. Consuming energy bars and sports drinks for a moderate workout
Energy bars and sports drinks are very high in calories. If you consume them for a low to moderate intense workout, you will end up only burning some of the calories off from the energy product. This can make you pick up weight and your workout will be virtually useless.
Avoiding these mistakes will keep you out of injuries way and will ensure that you progress in your training. Other mistakes to watch out for is leaning too heavy on the exercise equipment, overtraining, not drinking enough water and training too light.
Pilates is the one of the best ways to do so strentgen the core. Supreme pilates includes resistance tubing that increases the resistance and thus also the intensity of the exercise. The winsor pilates band makes doing Pilates mat work easier.