Fitness health centre

Eight tips to avoid workout injuries

3. Hire a pro

One of the best ways to avoid injury is to have lessons from a qualified trainer. This will help ensure your body is in proper alignment while you're working out, which can go a long way to protecting you from exercise injuries.

Getting expert advice can also keep you from doing the wrong workouts for your body type. If you do have weaknesses, a personal trainer will be able to advice you and help you moderate your routines.

While almost any professional can give you some good suggestions, you should make certain your trainer is aware of your personal parameters, including your age.

4. Cross-train

When we repeat the same muscle movements, it leads to overuse and repetitive use injuries, such as shin splints, tendonitis and never-ending muscle soreness.

Varying your workouts is a good way to avoid overuse of one particular set up muscles.

Cross-training, by basically alternating your exercises, means you can still get fit without stressing your body to the max - and it can make for fewer injuries too.

Fitness instructor Pip Dicey says: "Cross-training is a great way to condition muscle groups and allows you the ability to vary the stress placed on individual muscles and joints".

She tells us that by mixing and matching you can avoid repetitive strain injuries.

5. Act your age

If you've ever tried to do a cartwheel over the age of 40 you'll know what part age can play in fitness and suppleness!

It was easy as a child, but the years take their toll. It's the same with other kinds of fitness; it's easy to forget your age and the end result is that you do too much, too quickly, for too long, with too much intensity, and injury is often the end result.

Shoulders are among the body parts at greatest risk when older sports men and women try to relive former glories.

If you repeat a motion that puts too much strain on your shoulder joint, or force the muscles to work in a misaligned way, it's hard not to end up with a fitness injury.