How To Avoid Common Treadmill Injuries and Accidents – Safety Tips and Advice
Treadmills are an increasingly popular piece of home exercise equipment and for good reason. A good home treadmill when used correctly and safely will give you a great cardiovascular workout in the comfort of your own home without any kind of learning curve or special equipment training. They are a great way to work out for people of all ages and quite versatile in the way you choose to exercise, more so if you’ve put some extra cash into buying a treadmill with a great workout console.
They are however, still a big hunk of machinery complete with moving parts and the inherent dangers that can bring if used in unsafe and unsensible ways. Accidents are never completely avoidable but common treadmill injuries are often uneccessarily sustained and would have been very easy to avoid just by following some good common practices or by following some simple safety rules.
Common Causes Of Treadmill Related Injuries
Lack of a warm up – failure to warm up before working out is a common way in which injuries are sustained in any type of sport of exercise. Do some stretches before even setting foot on your treadmill and start slowly into a warm up routine before you move on to your main work out. 5 minutes of stretching and another 5 to 10 minutes warm up can help prevent a lot of the most common types of treadmill injuries.
Doing too much too soon – yes, we’re all impatient to get fit fast, lose the belly and get that super body but unfortunately any new exercise routine needs to be slowly eased into in order to prevent you doing yourself some serious harm. In fact, it doesn’t hurt to get a check up with a doctor if it has been a long time since you did any form of strenuous exercise to ensure your body can handle it and what your baseline should be. Pushing yourself from a sedentary lifestyle to running 5 miles is not a good way to start exercising and will do more harm than good. Ease in slowly and increase up to your goals.
Using the wrong shoes – It should go without saying, if you are going to walk or jog or run on a treadmill for long distances then you need the right kind of shoes. A good pair of trainers, running shoes etc. is what you need andthey should be comfortable too. If you exercise regulalry they are going to take a pounding so be sure to replace them regularly when the soles start wearing down and that kind of thing as worn out shoes can be just as damaging as wearing the wrong type (yes, I’ve seen high heels on a treadmill…argh!).
Lack of respect / goofing off - probably the easiest way to sustain an injury on a treadmill is to fool around with it. Like I said before, this is a bulky piece of equipment with a motor and several moving parts, fool with it and you’re going to get hurt. Oh sure, those YouTube videos of people falling off their treadmills or funny cats on a treadmill etc. are fun to see but what’s not fun is the aftermath of when all that stuff goes wrong. Respect your treadmill and teach those around you to respect it as well and it’ll go a long way to preventing injury.
Keep A Clear Space Around The Treamill – Leaving a couple of feet around the treadmill clear of clutter and furniture reduces the risk of personal injury should you for some reason fall off the treadmill. Keeping piles of junk around the machine is a guarantee of trouble from things falling onto the deck, or snagging the belt etc. Keep the treadmill area clean and tidy and it’ll be a much safer environment to work out in.
Get on and off with the belt stopped – Wait for the treadmill belt to stop moving before getting on or off the machine. Yes, you may have just got it to the speed you want when the phone rings or you have to jump off to catch a breath but you can easily return it to that speed. Hopping on to a moving treadmill is dangerous, as is hopping off before it has stopped moving.
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Special Note On How To Prevent Child Treadmill Injuries
Most of us forget how dangerous sports and exercise equipment can be until some tragic event occurs and reminds us of that fact, usually it’s at the expense of a celebrity or a celebrity’s family member. In the case of treadmills it would be the freakish accident which took the life of Mike Tyson’s daughter which highlighted to many of us again how dangerous a treadmill can be. Statistics printed in some newspapers after that tragedy highlighted an average of over 25,000 reported U.S. cases of exercise equipment injuries to children serious enough to require some form of formal medical treatment every year. That’s a whole heck of a lot of preventable pain and suffering. Australia ran a series of commercials warning of the dangers of treadmill injury to kids to help lower the number of accidents they were seeing.
Bottom line : Kids and treadmills do not mix.
It’s too easy for little hands to get into that gaps between the running deck and the belt which can cause serious friction burns which often require multiple skin grafts and surgeries to repair. Keep children away from treadmills when in use, and better still, keep them out of the room in which the treadmill is situated all together. You can buy locking plug boxes which will prevent anyone but you from being able to turn on the treadmill and some come with access keys too. In addition, to prevent the kind of strangulation injury which occurs in rare cases due to trailing leads and cords, you can buy cord ties and wraps. A little safety goes a long way to preventing injuries.
