Here we look at the dangers of exercise and how to exercise safely. Choose what matches your needs. This first section will take you to either exercises for health and fitness or exercises for weight loss. Attachment to the idea that the dangers of exercise are frequent and frightening will prevent you from enjoying exercise and all its dozens of benefits. Nothing in life is without risk.
Going for a walk is risky, but so is lying on the sofa. Pumping iron is risky, but so too is sitting in a chair.
Whether you are active or inactive, you may die at any moment from a host of causes. While its timing is uncertain, death is certain. The idea of life without death is incoherent.
None of us is able to apprehend the future. Nobody knows what the future will be. However, if certain past patterns continue to hold in the future one can predict what activities will minimize the dangers of exercise.
Furthermore, not exercising is more fraught with danger than exercising properly.
If you want to begin to feel much worse physically, just lie in bed inactively for a couple of months.
That is really dangerous!
Our topic here is the dangers of exercise (not the dangers of sport) and the best ways to exercise safely.
The frequency of injury with respect to a reasonable exercise program such as the one presented here on this free website is much less than the frequency of injury with respect to playing a competitive sport.
If you feel the need to engage in a sport, at least do it only as a reward for exercise, not in place of exercise.
There are several chief dangers of exercise in relation to ordinary physical exercise: sudden death, minor injuries, overuse, overtraining, and ineffectiveness.
Dangers of exercise: sudden death
Occasionally, a celebrity or a young, apparently healthy athlete will die during exercise. Occasionally, someone who is exercising will suffer a heart attack, stroke, or some other serious ailment.
Then the couch potatoes of the world say or think, "See? He shouldn't have been exercising. The dangers of exercise lead me to avoid it."
There is no way to prevent death during fitness or strength exercise, simply because there is no way to prevent death whether we are active or inactive.
In relation to the dangers of exercise, however, there are three preventative measures that we strongly suggest before you engage in any form of strenuous exercise, especially fitness exercise.
First, do not initiate an exercise program without the blessing of your physician. Insist that he or she give you an exercise (stress) electrocardiogram (ECG), which should not be confused with a resting ECG or a recovery ECG.
That is not an ideal test, but, in the hands of a well-trained internist or cardiologist, it's an extremely good one. You should approach your predicted maximum heart rate quite closely during the test.
If you have to pay for the exam yourself or shop around for a competent physician to administer it, please do so.
In addition, if you have any worries whatsoever about the dangers of exercise, or you engaging in exercise, discuss them with your physician before beginning to exercise.
Second, during regular intense fitness exercise, never permit your actual heart rate to exceed 85% of your predicted maximum heart rate.
We show you exactly how to do this in the section on intense fitness exercise. The link to the fitness exercise section of our website is listed on the menu buttons and at the bottom of this page.
Furthermore, in relation to the dangers of exercise, as we explain elsewhere on this website, it is not even necessary to do intense fitness exercise to achieve and maintain a healthful percentage of body fat.
Third when strength training, it's important to breathe properly and do potentially dangerous exercises such as bench presses in a power rack.
We discuss this in our section on strength exercise. The page link to the strength training section, and links other exercise sections of our website, are given at the bottom of this page.
Dangers of exercise: minor injuries
Occasionally, you may strain a muscle, inflame a tendon or ligament, or sprain a joint while exercising.
If you understand what you are doing and focus correctly on what you are doing, this will happen infrequently, if at all.
To prevent them understand what you are doing and pay attention. If they occur, use R.I.C.E. (rest-ice-compression-elevation) or just be patient.
With respect to the dangers of exercise, it is possible, for example, to step into a hole while walking and sprain an ankle.
Whenever the attention is separated from what we are doing, we are at risk in one way or another.
With respect to strength exercise, if you use a well-designed program, such as the one here on our free website, always warm-up correctly, and pay attention to performing each rep correctly, you'll never injure yourself seriously.
We explain in the strength training section of our website that this means, for example, never using momentum, not training too frequently, not ignoring pain, and avoiding large increases in resistance.
If you suffer an occasional minor injury during strength training, it's usually possible to train around it. Often active rest promotes healing. Don't let it keep you from training. Just go to the gym, don't do anything painful, and do your best.
Dangers of exercise: overuse
These dangers of exercise occur most frequently when repetitive fitness exercise is repeated too frequently.
For example, someone who runs for five or ten miles a day is either stupid or addicted to running. Our bodies did not evolve to take that kind of abuse.
If you follow the program presented here on this website, you won't ever get, for example, a stress fracture from running since there is no running on this program!
If you follow our program, it's unlikely that overuse will be a problem. If it becomes one, simply back off for a while.
Dangers of exercise: overtraining
This is a common problem among strength athletes. Since the program presented here combines both fitness and strength training, this is a potential problem.
However, if you follow the recovery part of the program presented here, it is very unlikely you'll wind up overtrained.
Please become an expert in avoiding overtraining! If you sense danger, just back off. When in doubt, rest too much rather than too little.
How are you able to tell if you are overtrained?
Its symptoms include: frequent colds; frequent minor injuries; persistent soreness and stiffness in muscles, joints, or tendons; loss of enthusiasm for exercising; inability to relax; sleep problems; loss of appetite; headaches; and a decrease in intellectual or academic work or performance.
Also, ensure that your life is balanced. Overtraining is most common among trainees who become attached to exercising. The purpose of exercise is to enhance life.
Remember that your ability to recover from exercise is limited. Too much exercise can be worse than too little. Though very beneficial, intense exercise stresses your internal organs like your kidneys, your liver, and your pancreas; it's important to let them recover fully.
By "listening" to your own body, you can avoid most of the dangers of exercise. By listening to your own body, you'll be able to determine a balance of fitness exercise, strength exercise, and rest and recovery that works well for you.
Dangers of exercise: ineffectiveness
An exercise program that wastes your time is dangerous. Overtraining is caused by too much enthusiasm for exercise. Ineffectiveness is caused by undertraining, which is caused by too little enthusiasm for exercise.
Since people with ineffective exercise programs often talk about "toning" muscles, avoid listening to such talk.
The cure for ineffectiveness is intensity. Actually, this is good news. As intensity increases, duration decreases; as duration increases, intensity decreases. This explains why we are unable to sprint very long but we are able to run for a long time at a much lower intensity.
In other words, intense exercise must be brief.
Furthermore, to avoid the dangers of exercise and overtraining, recovery time should be ample. Therefore, intense exercise should be relatively infrequent.
This explains why we recommend that you never do more than two intense fitness exercise sessions per week (and just one is fine) and that each work session last, at most, five minutes on the clock (and three is fine)!
The same principles about intensity apply to strength training. We recommend that you never do more than three intense strength exercise sessions per week (and just two are fine) and that each session last, if you are training alone, no more than about thirty or forty minutes clock-time.
Following the program presented here on this website, you'll spend under two hours weekly doing intense exercise! The only recommended exercise is mild fitness exercise such as walking, but we hope that you find moderate fitness exercise intrinsically enjoyable anyway.
Furthermore, you'll install the whole program slowly and progressively, which will allow your body ample time to adjust to it, thus minimizing physical discomfort.
In short, the dangers of exercise are not very fearsome. Furthermore, the dangers of exercise are infinitely preferable to the dangers of a lack of exercise. Be grateful every day for the privilege of being able to exercise.
Now that you understand the potential dangers of exercise, we show you how to exercise effectively and safely. In the exercise sections of our website, you will find all the different types of exercise from mild fitness exercise (such as walking) to intense fitness exercise.
Our exercise plans are excellent and they are free. We have exercise plans for health and fitness in addition to programs for weight loss.
If you want to personalize weight loss exercises, we show you how to tailor them to fit your individual circumstances. For adjusting weight loss exercises, see this section of our website:
Here we look at the dangers of exercise and how to exercise safely. Choose what matches your needs. This first section will take you to either exercises for health and fitness or exercises for weight loss. Attachment to the idea that the dangers of exercise are frequent and frightening will prevent you from enjoying exercise and all its dozens of benefits. Nothing in life is without risk.
