Weight Lifting Safety - Minimize Injury

Weight Lifting Safety

One of the main benefits of strength training is to reduce the incidence of injury, not to cause them. Dropping weights on your toes, smashing your fingers or tearing your biceps muscle isn’t something you’re striving for, so let’s avoid that!

Some people believe that weight lifting is a “dangerous” pastime – but what does this really mean? Yes, there are certain dangers when lugging around 50 lb dumbbells, but I could just as easily sprain an ankle getting out of bed in the morning. Weight lifting safety revolves around what you’re doing with the weights.

For example, if you’re lifting something heavier than you’re able to handle, then yes, your chance for injury as increased substantially. If you’re “playing around” in the gym, you’re more likely to break your toe or smash your fingers. It’s not the act of weight lifting that causes problems – it’s when lifts aren’t done properly and proper gym etiquette isn’t followed!

Again, strength training does have some risk of injury. Here’re some weight lifting safety tips to avoid these injuries.

Weight Lifting Safety: Exercise Machine Safety Tips

I’m not a real big proponent on using weight machines since they limit your range of motion, they’re very expensive and require very little stabilization energy (which helps create muscle confusion). But, weight machines can be helpful for those just beginning a training program to get in the habit of lifting with correct form.

Another selling point for weight machines is their safety record. You won’t find anyone who was crushed with a falling weight, but you may come across the occasional “smashed finger”.

Here’s some weight lifting safety tips with regard to exercise machines…

• The machine you’re using is built for one, maybe two different exercises. Never more! Don’t invent new ways to use the device – this surely increases your chance for an unexpected injury. A biceps curl machine isn’t meant for leg curls, while a leg press isn’t meant for upright squats. Use the machines as they were meant to be used!

• Use fasteners! Some machines have some sort of seatbelt or similar device to strap your butt down onto the seat. It’s there for a reason! If you don’t use it on a regular basis, you’ll end up with a weight plateau because you’ll be wasting all your energy trying to keep yourself down in the seat.

• Do not drop the weights! What I mean is, don’t go to the end of the motion and then release the dumbbells so that the weights slam back down to the floor. You wouldn’t drop the barbell on your chest once you’ve reached the top of your bench press, so don’t drop weights on the weight machines. You can damage the machine, the weight plates, or any of your body parts that may be in the way of any moving part. This is a pet peeve of mine – don’t do this!

• Make the proper adjustments on any machine you use. If you’re doing leg extensions and the support padding is a good foot above your knee, don’t try to adjust your body to “make it work”. Get off the machine, adjust the seat, sit back down and begin. There’s really no reason to not make the machine fit your body! They’re made (usually) to be adjustable so that a wide range of individuals can use them. This normally involves pulling a pin out of a sliding bar that’ll adjust the seat height or any other type of adjustment. When you’re finish adjusting, make sure it’s secure! Make sure the pin is all the way into the hole! I’d hate to see someone fall and break their ankle because the seat wasn’t fully secured when they went to sit on the machine.

Weight Lifting Machines: Free Weight Safety Tips

Here’re some more weight lifting safety tips with regard to free weights…

• Concentrate on what you’re doing! Holding a conversation with someone while you’re carrying weights back to the rack can cause you to misplace them –they’ll fall to the floor and smash your toes. Not good. Focus on what you’re doing!

• Lifting the weight off the rack also has proper technique. Bend your arms, bend your knees and make sure you’re standing close enough to the rack to get enough leverage to lift the weight. Even Superman couldn’t lift a 50 lb dumbbell laterally without bending his arm. That means you definitely can’t, either! This is a fantastic way to injure yourself.

• Hold all weight plates with two hands (especially the heavier ones). On the same note, carry one weight plate at a time! Again, bend your arms and knees when lifting the weights.

• Be careful with barbells. They’re long! Holding a barbell parallel to the ground can cause a path of destruction – just hold the bar vertically and watch what you’re doing.

• Don’t drop weights on the floor! It may seem easier to do this especially while doing the dumbbell press, but don’t! Lower the weights to your chest and rock yourself up to a sitting position. Don’t drop the weights because it forces you to lose control of the weights. In other words, who knows what’ll happen after you release the weight onto the floor where it can roll away and become a hazard. Also, this distracts the other gym-goers and gives you the image of “that guy” who has so much ego that he has to make noise so that people notice. Don’t do this! It causes more harm than good.

• Always use the collars or weight clamps on the end of a barbell. Think about it: you’re doing the bench press and one arm feels “weaker” than the other. The bar starts to tilt. The weight slides off, slamming onto the floor and rolling away. At the same time, the weight at the other end of the bar pulls you and your body towards the floor, along with a bunch of weights. That just doesn’t sound good at all, does it? Anything can happen when those weights make contact with the floor.

• When you’re finished with the weights, return them! Don’t leave them sitting around on the floor or on benches for obvious reasons. Someone could trip, fall, break their leg, anything. Using the same technique as removing weights from the rack, make sure to bend your arms, use your legs and gently replace them to the rack. Avoid straining your back or arms here!

• When in doubt, use a spotter! Don’t take the risk or reaching that point of “failure” and not being able to return the bar back to its resting position. This has happened to me and, I must say, it’s painful and quite embarrassing. I ended up dislocating my shoulder because I was desperately trying to force the bar back to its resting point.

Weight lifting safety should never be overlooked! The gym can be a very safe place, especially when everyone’s properly handling the weights. Again, you may here individuals afraid of the dangers in the gym – but these dangers are minimized when safety is taken into consideration.

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