Exercise, General

On safety

This month’s post is about safety; mostly in training, but quite a lot of it applies equally to life in general. It also mostly boils down to paying attention. I have written about training mindfully before, and while everything in that post holds, I realize it is not enough. To train safely, you need to be aware of what is around you apart from what you are doing.

Mind your surroundings

Even if you don’t live on Lian Yu, keeping track of things going on around you keeps you safe, whether you’re training or just going about your daily business.

It’s not about being constantly alert. You need to focus on what you’re doing. Being mindful of your surroundings means not closing yourself off entirely.

You walk around with headphones in your ears and your nose in your mobile, you’re going to walk into/off/through something sooner or later.

You don’t need to be on constant alert and looking over your shoulder and all around you all the time, but keeping your senses open saves you a lot of trouble.

Take the time to set up

If, like me, you train at home, take a couple of minutes to check things before you start. It can be as simple as making sure there’s nothing that you can break close by, or anything that would hurt inordinately if you were to fall on it.

Imagine stepping on these. With all your body.

If you’re using any equipment, a quick check that all is in order before you start lets you avoid a number of mishaps.

You control yourself. Nothing else.

No matter how much you may love your pets and small children, there are some times when you need to put them away for a bit. The time you’re training is such a time.

While you can mostly expect adults or older children to keep a safe distance (mostly – I’ve seen oblivious university students walk through the middle of a sword fight more times than I’m comfortable with), you can make no assumptions with small children or pets.

One of the things that prompted this post was a video I saw earlier this month of a young woman accidentally kicking her dog across the room while attempting a handstand.

(Not funny.)

While I’m sure she didn’t mean it, there’s no way that didn’t hurt like hell. So make sure you lock Fluffy out before you try to break your record at the overhead press.

You might also want to make sure there’s no way anyone might accidentally wander in, especially if you’re practicing anything involving ballistic movements – getting your coffee kicked into your face can really spoil your day.

While I wouldn’t suggest locking yourself in (dangerous if something happens and you need help) working some distance away from doors and windows is a good idea.

If you’re working in a gym with other people, just make sure you give other people space to work in, and watch out for people in your space.

You’re not completely in control of yourself either

Much as we’d love to believe otherwise, there are times when we’re not all there. Sometimes our body or our mind have other plans, and the killer routine we were planning just isn’t going to happen.

Sometimes you just need to dial it back because you’re injured or sick; you might even just be having an off day. Sometimes you just need a longer warm up. If you’re just rushing in to get it over with, you’re going to miss some of the hints your body is giving you until your elbow says bye in the middle of a handstand.

For reasons that should hopefully be obvious, booze and training don’t mix. At all.

Mind the basics!

Make sure you know your own capabilities before trying out anything weird, and build up to it slowly. That may sometimes include covering different skills – there’s a reason grapplers spend a lot of time practicing falls and rolls. Once you head out into unknown territory, there’s no telling what could happen, like this video from when I was finishing off this post.

I’m probably at one of the points where I’m most dangerous to myself; I’ve got enough strength and practice to try some trickier things, but not enough to pull them off reliably. That is a natural part of learning stuff; you can’t grow if you don’t poke at the edges of your comfort zone and fail a few times.

The important thing is to make sure those failures don’t floor you permanently. Before I tried that, I had made sure that my path was clear in both directions, and I have been practicing rolls enough to be reasonably confident that if I did fall, I could do so without hurting myself. It was still unexpected, but no harm done. If I had not had that practice, or had not taken the precaution of clearing the space, it would have been painful.

It *is* common sense

You, while reading this

Hopefully you were going “duh” a lot while reading the above; most of it should be blindingly obvious. Fact is, sometimes we forget the obvious, and the occasional reminder doesn’t go amiss.

I’ll be back with another post on the first Monday next month. In the meantime, if you have any safety tips to share, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below!

Image credits