Do Not Ego Lift
Hey there!
Don’t Ego lift.
I hope you know this already.
It causes injury, so don’t do it.
Always warm up too before lifting heavy, or progress through the weight to not cause injury.
A good example of why you shouldn’t go into the gym with an ego, without warming up is the injury that occurred to the professional wrestler Cody Rhodes just last year. He explained that he went to the bench and just put on heavy weight with no warm up or nothing. As soon as he began lifting the weight his pectoral just snapped. Immediately knew what he did wrong, he said.
If you have time, do some light cardio first to get the blood going. It can be the treadmill, bicycle, jumping jacks, running in place, jump rope, you name it.
If not, do warm up sets with LIGHT weight to get a little blood flow before stretching. Especially if you’re going to lift heavy, so about 2-3 sets with a bit of added weight after each warm up set.
Do not jump a crazy amount of weight after a good set either. If you lift 60 and it felt good, DO NOT jump up to 120.
Up the weight slowly and progress cautiously.
People at the gym are minding their own business.
You have nobody to impress. You’re there to improve on yourself, not to harm and injure your body.
You shouldn’t care about what other people are thinking. As long as you’re minding your own business and not getting in the way of others then it doesn’t matter.
In reality, these sort of thoughts are only in your head, so you have to be mentally strong to block them out from getting in the way of your fitness journey. I still pick up 5lb weights to warm up, and I make sure to take my time warming up.
Trust me, the pain of not carrying a bunch of weight all at once is minuscule compared to the pain of not being able to workout in general because of injury..
So let’s keep our workouts safe so that we don’t have to go away from the gym to recover from an injury.
Have a great day!