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 have a body that rebels by falling apart when the going gets tough.

Sports injuries, such as shoulder injuries in volleyball and baseball players, Knee injuries in football and soccer players, back injuries in weight lifters, and foot or hip injuries in runners such as IT band injuries,  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 while reducing future chances of injury and help improve the quality of workouts while working around the injury.

 

With their doctors approval, in the case of a knee injury, Houston and The Woodlands Personal Trainer Melissa at Citiflex.com has helped a client who is a former college basketball player with torn meniscus in both knees, have total body workouts that did not further damage the knees by avoiding lunges, deep squats and plyometrics. 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, walking up  bleachers was a good alternative leg workout that prevented impact and pain as well as cycling workouts out on the trails in the area. .

 

In the case of a meniscus knee injury, a pool is good 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. It is important in knee problems to also strengthen the inner thigh muscle because this muscle is usually weaker than the outer thigh quad muscle..so doing inner thigh presses with a stretch band keeping the leg straight will also help.

The client, in the case of the basketball player, also had 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 contributed to her lack of desire to workout as an ex professional athlete. The client needed to see how her workouts could 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 and baseball players often experience shoulder injuries..this may be because during weight training days, many inexperienced coaches forced players to do heavy bench press with the bar coming all the way down and touching the chest. This is an outdated practice and has been implicated by orthopedic doctors as a key reason why older athletes are having injuries to the shoulder ligaments and tendons on otherwise strong players.
Once the arm breaks parallel on the decline during a chest press, all the weight is forced away from the chest muscle and shifts 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.
Runners with knee or IT band Injuries or achilles tendonitis, might consider taking magnesium because the hamstrings and quads being too tight can cause a number of problems. Magnesium helps the muscles to relax following a workout so that a lot of strain is not put on the tendons attaching the muscle to the bone so that the tendons do not tear. Also, it is helpful for runners to ice the injury following a workout with ice water that is about 50 to 60 degrees for six to eight minutes at a time. And stretching out the quads, hamstrings, calves and foot with a foam roller is extreemly helpful and this site has photos of stretching with a foam roller for help.