3 Fitness Mistakes: Are You Guilty?

We see people in physical therapy on a regular basis that get injured when starting well-intentioned fitness programs.  This is a bit of a paradox for us because injured folks are our lifeblood, but so much of these things can be avoided!   The staff at SSOR is committed to helping you help yourself avoid having to come see us, so here’s three avoidable things you might be doing:

 
1.  Not getting properly screened before starting.  If you’ve been sedentary for a while or are trying a “couch to 5K” plan, it’s a good idea to see your physician to make sure you’re healthy for activity.  Additionally, you should see one of the physical therapists at SSOR to do a musculoskeletal screen of you to make sure nothing is lurking below the surface that will create problems for you down the road. You should be long, strong, mobile, and stable!
2. Starting too fast/too much too soon.  The hot trend these days is do it fast and do it quickly.  However, without a general fitness base, this will inevitably lead to problems.  If you don’t have appropriate joint mobility or have an injury history that may have caused mobility deficits, you’re asking for trouble.  Without proper work capacity/tolerance, fatigue ensues and with fatigue comes poor technique.  Poor technique almost always leads to injury at some point and a visit to the gang at SSOR.  Ramp things up slowly.
3.  Not listening to your body.  May be you’re working really hard and are really short of breath or light-headed.  Your body is telling you to stop, so you should.  If not, at a minimum, reduce how hard you are working or take a break.  Additionally, if you’re having pain with exercise or things during normal daily living start to hurt, it means you may have a problem on your hands.  If that is the case, give the physical therapists at SSOR a buzz and we’d be glad to help get to the root of the problem.
The physical therapists at SSOR are all about solutions, not stop gaps.  We’ll figure out the problem and get you back to doing the things you enjoy doing as soon as possible.  Give us a call, it would be a privilege to serve you and partner with you in your care.

Tags: Fitness, fitness mistakes, Kansas City, Overland Park, Physical Therapy, prairie village, SSOR Physical Therapy