At last, gyms are re-opening! Whilst I’m sure a number of you have ‘got by’ with a selection of home exercises, nothing beats professional gym equipment and that special environment that encourages you to do just that little bit more. I for one, can’t wait.

A couple of words of warning though. There is a distinct danger you will have lost a little ‘form’ or ‘technique’ in exercising over the last few months, and even if you have been determinedly doing your press-ups in the lounge, you are certainly not going to be at the levels you reached on bench press, pre-lockdown. Fact.

What appear to be almost identical exercises, end up loading your musculature, ligaments and joints in a slightly different way. That in itself is enough to cause injury. If on restarting at the gym in the next few weeks, you try to immediately return to, say, even 80% of your mid-March effort levels, I can pretty much guarantee this will result in a soft tissue injury.

So, what can we do about this? Well firstly, let’s pretty much write off the first four gym visits. Make them easy so you can’t wait for the next visit. Let’s aim for just 50-70% of previous effort levels, and that applies just as much to the ‘Stepper’ as it does the ‘Smith Rack’. By visit number six, you will be back to your previous levels, by eight you’ll be beyond where you were four months ago. Trust the process.

Consider your quality of movement to avoid injury at the gym

The title of this piece provides a clue as to the second significant precaution you can take in avoiding picking up an annoying injury. Having spent all this time not being able to visit the gym, don’t allow a silly niggle to stop you from building momentum. Remember, the more consistent your training is, the better the results will be. 

During my career as a Musculoskeletal specialist, rehabilitation and exercise have been an essential part of what I call a patient’s toolbox. A box of advice, things to do and maybe more importantly, things not to do. I must have offered the line “Quality, not Quantity” literally tens of thousands of times. Why? Because if you are solely focused on that magic number, it’s a given that your last few repetitions (or minutes on the treadmill), will be of poor quality and therefore likely to be injurious. Six quality reps are both safer and more effective than ten poorly performed. As you perfect your technique and get stronger, then the sky’s the limit.

So, your take-home message: Enjoy your gym return obviously, but concentrate on good technique, even if that means reducing the overall intensity of your programme for the first four visits. You will catch up in no time, but only if you manage to avoid injury. Quality, not Quantity.