Personal injuries can plague even the most fit individuals and put a real damper on workouts. Many athletic men and women have the mindset of a workout fanatic but a body that rebels by falling apart when the going gets tough.

Sports injuries, particularly a knee injury, can prevent an athlete from achieving peak fitness. Fortunately, a personal trainer with experience can help a client with an injury still get a good workout.

 

In the case of a knee injury, Houston Personal Trainer Melissa at Citiflex.com is helping a current client who is a former college basketball player with torn meniscus in both knees, have total body workouts that will not further damage the knees. Knee problems often eliminate the possibility of lunges, squats, jumping and other high impact activities such as running. But an experienced trainer can be creative and come up with a good workout to get the heart rate up, promote muscle growth and keep a lean sculpted look. For this particular client, running bleachers was a good alternative leg workout that prevented impact and pain.

 

In the case of a meniscus knee injury, often a pool is good for a running workout and spinning is a great rehab activity. There are many exercises that can be done with a stability ball and a med ball such as hyper extensions and hip flexion exercises. The meniscus must be protected by keeping the injured knee from taking weight in a flexed position.

The client, in the case of the basketball player, also has to be convinced that the workouts she did as a student, the ones that the coach wanted make so difficult that the athletes would need to throw up afterwards, might have actually been the cause of her knee injury problems. The client must be re-educated to know that workouts can be fun but still be effective. To encourage exercise adherence, a personal trainer has to prevent injury as well as help the client enjoy the workouts so they will continue to do the exercises on their own later. Plus, a client will not be able to continue to use the personal trainer if they get injured by a haphazard workout that prevents them from working out any more.
Volleyball players often experience shoulder injuries..often this is because during weight training days, many in experienced coaches force players to do bench press with the bar coming all the way down and touching the chest. This is an outdated practice and is great for causing injuries to the shoulder ligaments and tendons on otherwise strong volleyball players. Once the arm breaks parallel on the decline during a chest press, all the weight is forced away from the chest and to the shoulder which does not have the strength of the pectoral muscles and will almost certainly cause injuries. Similarly, coaches cause injuries when they ask players to do a one rep max that is heavier than twenty percent more of their normal rep. During squats, a one rep max should be proceeded by a long warm up and the one rep max should be no more than twenty percent heavier than the normal reps done by the athlete to prevent knees blowing out. After having many discussions with orthopedic surgeons has personal trainer Melissa incorporated these wise admonitions from sports specialists and has managed to help keep her clients injury free.