Advice for Beginners

• Warm up properly - Always warm up before doing any serious exercise. This will help you to stay injury free.
• Stop if it hurts - If you feel pain at any time during your workout, stop immediately. The saying "no pain, no gain" is popular in with old-school PE teachers who don't know what they're talking about. Working through pain could do serious damage to muscles, joints and tendons.
• Watch you form - Maintain perfect form for every repetition of every exercise. If you don't have good form you won't get the full benefit fo the exercise and may injure yourself. (More detail about form later)
• Start light - Pick a weight you can manage easily the first time you perform any lifting exercise. This way you can concentrate on performing the exercise perfectly, and then you can build up the weight over time.
• Brace your core - You can help to stabilise your body and reduce your injury risk by engaging your core during an exercise. To do this, start by ensuring that you are standing or sitting up straight with your hips in line with your torso. Now imagine that someone is about to punch you in the stomach and you have to tense your abdominal muscles to take the blow. You need to maintain that contraction throughout the move to protect your lower back from muscle strains.