The Dangers of Weight Lifting
Weight lifting is an excellent method for building muscles, getting a nice toned body and losing weight. It has many pros compared to other methods (like running for weight loss) a work out can be pretty short yet very effective, it’s easy to scale up or down depending on your fitness level. There are many different exercise so you will never get bored of doing the same thing. Different exercise allow you to target different muscle groups – letting you sculpt your body the way you want it.
Yet for all it’s pros there is a major con – weight lifting can be dangerous! The danger comes from the fact that many of the most effective exercise involve compound movements, and require good technique to perform. Do them with bad technique and you risk suffering an injury, either right away or eventually (depending on the weight you use and just how wrong your technique is.)
Also, unlike body weight exercise, where you can get injured by in most cases you will see a potential injury coming a long way before you get injured. And most injuries are some variation of pulling a muscle and comes from doing many repetitions of a given exercise. In contrast with weight lifting you can potentially get a serious injury in just one move. It doesn’t even have to be a heavy lift, even moderate amount can cause a serious injury if your technique is wrong enough.
This shouldn’t stop you from incorporating weight lifting into your work outs, as it is very, very effective. It does however mean that you should learn the technique before you jump in, this is especially vital for guys who have a tendency of going for heavy weights to “see how much I can lift.” So learn the technique first, using very, very low weights to practice moves (a broomstick is a popular replacement for barbell to learn technique.)
If you are serious about using weight lifting as your main exercise method, then joining a gym that has a weight lifting program or joining some classes where a certified instructor will teach you the correct technique is a good idea. Although you can teach yourself fairly well by watching instructional videos on youtube just try to learn why the move is done a certain way, in addition to learning how to do it.
