New health and fitness trends come to the fore online all the time and, of course, it’s incredibly tempting to tap into them all to see if they can help you hit your goals.
This year alone has seen everything from yoga flows combined with strength training, dancing with functional exercises, martial arts with cardio, the 75 Hard challenge, the 28-Day Wall Pilates challenge, the Dead Hang challenge and many, many more.
While getting more exercise and being more active generally is always to be commended, it’s important when considering online fitness trends to make sure that what you’re doing is within your capabilities and you’re not pushing yourself too hard too soon, just for the sake of hitting up a new fad.
If you jump in quickly, without proper preparation for the activity at hand, you increase the risk of injury, including strains and sprains, and potentially more serious complications like stress fractures and ligament/muscle tears.
That’s not to say that you can’t or shouldn’t try out new ways of keeping fit, but you do need to make sure that you don’t increase your training load too quickly if you want to remain injury-free.
Whatever new activity you do want to try, always prioritise sufficient time for rest and give yourself time for your body to adapt to this increased level of physical exertion.
By diversifying your training programme, including a mix of both cardio and resistance training, you can help to build up strength and keep injuries at bay.
However, the more exercise you do the more likely it is that you’ll experience tension and tightness in your muscles. As such, going to see a physiotherapist regularly can help to deal with small aches and pains quickly before they snowball and become something significantly harder to manage.
If you’d like to find out more, get in touch with the Clear Physio team today.
