You can reduce your risk of exercise injury by following these recommendations:

Get good advice:

You can obtain information and advice about exercise safety from your doctor, a sports medicine doctor, physiotherapist or an exercise physiologist or see a sporting association about sporting technique and equipment.

Take care and listen to your body 

Injuries are more likely if you ignore your body’s signals of fatigue, discomfort and pain. Suggestions include: 

• See your doctor for a full medical check-up before embarking on any new fitness program.

• Cross-train with other sports and exercises to reduce the risk of overtraining.

• Make your exercise program progressive--Respect your current fitness level by starting an exercise program at a pace and duration that you know you can maintain. Increase intensity and duration gradually.

• Make sure you have at least one recovery day, and preferably two, every week.

• Injuries need rest – trying to ‘work through’ the pain will cause more damage to soft muscle tissue and delay healing.

• If you have a pre-existing injury or an area that is prone to injury, consult your doctor or physiotherapist before starting. Rehabilitation exercises may help to strengthen the injured area or you may be advised to strap it prior to exercising to provide support.

Stop exercising immediately 

If you experience any of the following symptoms, stop exercising and seek medical help: 

• Feel discomfort or pain

• Have chest pain or other pain that could indicate a heart attack, including pain in the neck and jaw, pain traveling down the arm or pain between the shoulder blades

• Experience extreme breathlessness

• Develop a rapid or irregular heartbeat during exercise

• Joint pain persisting after more than three days of rest

Take it easy if you are sick or injured 

When you come down with a cold or other illness your body needs all of its resources to combat the infection and heal. This is also true when recovering from an injury or surgery. Adding exercise to the stress of illness puts extra strain on your body's energy reserves and immune system. Wait until you are fully recovered before resuming regular exercise. When you do resume, take into account your period of inactivity and avoid vigorous workouts until your body is back into the routine.

Drinking lots of water 

You can lose around one and a half liters of fluid for every hour of exercise. One of the first symptoms of dehydration is fatigue, which causes a significant drop in sporting performance. It may also make you susceptible to cramps, heat stress and heat stroke. Suggestions include: 

• Avoid starting exercise dehydrated. Drink plenty of fluids for several hours prior to exercise.

• If you are well hydrated you should be able to pass a good volume of clear urine in the hour before exercise.

• Drink at least 500ml (2 cups) an hour before exercise.

• Drink at least 150ml every 15 minutes during exercise.

• During exercise take advantage of all breaks in play to drink up.

• After exercise drink liberally to ensure you are fully re-hydrated.