When building muscle up without even realising it you can put your self at serious risk of illness, injury and reduce your progress. Sure it is great that you want to workout and build muscle up but at the same time one bad injury, one forgetful moment can put you out of action for months and with possible health and financial consequences. By adhering to the following guidelines such incidents can be easily avoided. Here we go with our build muscle up safely guidelines:
1) Always check and double check you have put the barbell collars on before you start lifting. One side can be made heavier by just a slight looseness of a collar. The heavier side will force it’s way down and the weight disc may slide even further until it drops off. When this happens that end will be very light and thrown upwards by the opposing disc. Next the barbell will flip mercilessly through the air and possibly cause real damage to people or equipment!
2) If you are attempting one rep maximums then do so with a spotter. This is someone who can aid you should you not be able to push or lift the bar back up. The last thing you want to occur is to have yourself stuck weighted down by a heavy barbell, you may laugh but I’ve seen it happen.
3) If you are sick don’t train. Seems too obvious but I regularly see people who are clearly suffering from a high fever and cough splutter, there way through a training session. More often than not the trainer beats none of their best scores and only lands themselves in bed for a few days. By training when you are sick you are allowing the sickness to take a firmer grip of you because working out will lower your immune system for a while.
4) Maintain correct technique. If you perform exercises incorrectly like swinging barbells using your body’s momentum then you not only risk serious injury but you will also make little progress as you aren’t targeting the muscle group well enough. Use strict form all the time.
5) Do not over do it. It is very common when motivation is high especially for those new to bodubuilding that you wish to weight train as much as you can. This motivation is good but training everyday or even every other day will probably be too much for most people unless it is a split routine. Lifting weights again when your muscle have not yet fully recovered from a previous workout will actually weaken your muscle not make them stronger.
6) Failure to follow a decent diet. If you want to build muscle then you are going to have to consider muscle building nutrition as very important. If you do not take on board sufficient calories then you are not going to be able to support growth of more muscle mass rendering your efforts useless. Throughout the day consume high quality meals.
7) Showing off to your friends. Attempting to more than your mates can end with disastrous results. It is much wiser to compete against your scores from past sessions. Record your workouts in a training log so that you know what your personal best to beat is. This will be much more fruitful and reduce your risk of injury.
Warm up enough. If you do not do so then your muscles are muck likelier to strain, snap and tear. This can put you out for weeks or months. It is very easy to do, 5-10 minutes aerobic work, a few stretching exercises and then a few warm up sets will be enough.
With those above guidelines in mind and with correct muscle building nutrition there is no reason why you should not build muscle up happily and safely where ever you train.