Disclaimer: none of this is medical advice and I’m not a medical professional. This is just a reminder for you to actually seek out medical advice before going to the gym so you don’t get hurt (or at least reduce the changes of that happening)
Before starting a training plan at the gym, taking the time to go to a doctor and getting a physical evaluation is crucial. This evaluation, performed by a qualified medical professional, serves as a crucial foundation to help you make the most of your workout routine while staying safe and injury-free.
In this article, I ‘ll show you the reasons for seeking a pre-gym medical evaluation, including posture assessment, identification of weak areas, and addressing existing injuries before you go out and start lifting weights.
Posture and weak areas
One of the fundamental aspects of a successful gym experience is maintaining good posture during exercises. Poor posture can lead to muscle imbalances, increased strain on certain areas of the body, and a higher risk of injuries. During a pre-gym medical evaluation, a healthcare professional needs to assess your posture to identify any misalignments or postural issues.
Examples:
1) I for some years (and I’m, at the time of writing this article, still working on that) had “rounded” shoulders and this was a result of basically working a lot more the muscles that “bring” the shoulders forward and not working the muscles that “pull” the shoulders backwards (and also not stretching the muscles).
If I hadn’t diagnosed that problem I wouldn’t have changed my training plan to focus more on the muscles that pull the shoulders back and wouldn’t have developed the daily stretching routine I’m currently following.
2) Again since I first started going to the gym, and I only identified this problem recently, I had much more developed quads (the muscles in the front side of the thigh) and relatively weak hamstrings (the muscles in the back side of the thigh).
The worst injury I’ve ever had was a knee injury and if I had more balanced legs it could have prevented that (or at least reduced the severity of that.)
3) One of the most overlooked muscle groups in a lot of gym plans are the rotator cuff muscles. I also did that mistake by not doing any external shoulder rotations. Eventually I injured myself while doing bench presses. This was probably a result of a combination of factors such as excessive use of some tendons and bad technique.
There are more examples but these three are the main ones that I have identified so far.
All of this to say this:
If I had checked first with a medical professional maybe I wouldn’t have developed those problems.
Generally speaking the personal trainers and to some extent physical therapists at your local gym don’t have the capability to identify some of those problems.
You need to actually go to a medical professional (a doctor) and get a physical evaluation. He or she puts his/her hand on your shoulders and squeezes it and stuff like like. And rotates, twists, bends your arm to find if you have pain, or ask you to push/pull something to evaluate your strength during some very specific movements.
Point being that just looking at you is not enough.
Now based on the doctors feedback you are going to plan or change your gym plan and/or your stretching routine.
Weak areas and change in plans
Let’s say you were training 3x a week at the gym. With a plan that maybe had 12 sets of chest exercises, no specific posterior deltoid exercises (the back part of the shoulders muscles), and just 3 sets of “pulling” type exercises, among other exercises.
Now you go to the doctor and he/she says: “Alright you have rounded shoulders, you need to fix that”.
Now you go ahead and change your training plan at the gym and start doing some stretching exercises, like this:
instead of doing 12 sets of chest exercises you only do 6. You start doing more sets for “pulling” type movements, now you do 3 sets of horizontal pulling and 3 sets of vertical pulling.
You also add 3 sets of “face pulls” to work the rear part of the shoulders.
On top of that you start doing external rotation exercises (with bands or cables for example) to strengthen your rotator cuff muscles responsible for stabilizing the shoulder.
Addressing Injuries: Seek Physician’s Guidance First
One time I was just asking a friend about how his gym routine was going, because he recently was starting to go to the gym for the first time, and after some questions I realized that he had pain while doing some specific exercise. From the questions I concluded that he was not talking about for example being sore from overtraining/ not enough recovery, it was actually some kind of injury/posture problem.
He just went to the gym and without a training plan (it was at a very cheap gym) started to lift weights based on what his friends (that didn’t know what they were doing) recommend him to do.
Please don’t do this.
It’s not supposed for you to start training without being checked first (and of course you need a training plan)
Imagine a racing car team just putting the driver in the car without checking anything:
Didn’t check the brakes, so the driver could try to brake and not have enough stopping force.
Didn’t check the refrigeration system, so in the middle of the race the car can overheat and catch fire.
And so on…
It’s the same logic for the human body.
You can’t just start to push your body to it’s limits without knowing everything is working condition.
The race car driver needs the mechanics to check the car.
You need the doctor to check your body.
Conclusion:
It is possible, and even likely, that you have or developed imbalances resulting from your training routine. Those will eventually cause injuries and you need to fix that.
Your gym plan needs to take that into account in order to fix those problems.
You need to check if everything is okay before pushing the limits of your body.
So go to a doctor before starting to lift weights.