Exercise is not only a great way to help burn those excess unwanted calories, it is also a great way to increase your heart muscles, improve your cardiovascular system, and strengthen/tone your muscles. Exercise is pretty much an overall health builder.

While exercise is great and should be performed on a daily basis, it is also very important; I just cannot stress enough the importance of exercising safely. If you are not following proper form, or are overdoing it, exercise can be very dangerous. There are a few things when working out or exercising that you need to be careful of.

Doctors Advice

If you are not at all active or are only a little active, it is very important to pay your doctor a visit for a physical. This way your doctor can give you some advice on what you are capable of doing, and what he would recommend for you to start with.

Warm up

Whether you are lifting weights or are getting ready to do any type of cardio it is important to first warm up your muscles, to do this you should take about 5 min and perform a very light simplified version of the exercise you will be doing. Example if your going to be riding a bike at 7mi/h then for warm up you would do 5 min of 2mi/h. Warming up will prevent muscles from being pulled, or torn during your exercise.

Stretching

After going through your 5 min of warm up, your muscles should now be more flexible, and should have more blood running through them. Now take 5 minutes to stretch. Stretching is an important step as it makes the muscles more loose and able to be stretched. This also helps to increase your range of motion allowing you to really be able to get the most out of your workouts.

Overdoing It

This is something I see a lot more than I would like. Some people seem to think that if they don’t run till they drop then they aren’t going to accomplish anything. I realize that you want to make progress very quickly but let me just point out that practically killing yourself with exercise is not going to help you out one bit. It takes time for your body to get used to this extra load that you’re placing on it. Start off slow and work your way up, the best way to tell if you’re overdoing it is to listen to your body. If you start to feel weak or light headed then stop immediately.

Re-Hydrate

Water is one of the most important things to remember when exercising, especially with cardio exercises. This type of exercises causes you to lose a lot of water through sweat, and heavy breathing. In order for your body to stay hydrated and able to keep your body cool, you have to replace the water that it has just lost. A lack of water in your body could mean the difference between a good and bad exercise session.

Cool Down

As important as it was to warm your muscles up before exercising, it is also important to cool them down at the end of your exercising period. This is nothing more than repeating the warm up phase. Example if you just finished running at 7mi/h instead of stopping right there back it down to a light jog(3mi/hr) for about 5 min to allow your muscles to cool down a bit. Believe it or not stopping without first cooling the muscles down could cause injuries to the muscles as well.

As a last point I want to just remind you to go at your own pace, don’t look at somebody who has already lost all kinds of weight and base your exercises intensity on what they’re doing because you will hurt yourself, they didn’t start like that, they had to start off slow and work they’re way up.

The next time you workout/exercise just follow these simple guidelines and it will greatly reduce your chances of accruing injuries, or being burnt out from your exercises.