WARM UP
Injuries can happen with every move, step or freeze you make. But if you pay attention to some simple things you can avoid as much of them as possible:
Proper warm up:
Never stretch your cold muscles!
Try to warm your muscles up by doing easy steps or other stuff that isn’t stressing them too much (like toprocking, uprocking, basic footwork).
Your joints are the most susceptible parts of the body.
You really should warm them up carefully!
Shoulders: Swing your arms in circular motions.
Hip: Swing your legs.
Wrists: Put your hands together and make circular motions with your hands (in both directions).
Stretching before session:
Pay attention to a correct and proper position!
Get in a position in which your muscle gets stretched but which doesn’t cause pain! Pain is always a bad sign. Keep your sternum and your neck with the head straight on a line all the time. This prevents from making a hunchback which actually gives a lot of pressure to the lower back. And keep breathing calmly! Do not press breath because this causes that you get harden. Hold any position for about 20-30s!
And don’t forget: Never bob up and down to stretch! This brings you in a overstretched position. The muscle receptors (nerve cells) wanna protect you of an injury and cause the muscle to contract. Because of that you have a contrary effect: the muscles aren’t relaxed but hardened! (bob up and down stretching can only be used to build up muscle tension to make you aggressive).
Cool down:
Easy cool down after the session!
Try not to immediately stop but to cool you down with some further exercises (because of the stress and during the metabolic processes in the muscles, metabolites were built up during the session. with a cool down your body dismantle them better again and thus they don’t cause catabolic effects like over acidified muscles).
Stretching after session:
(Easy) stretching after practicing is at least as important as stretching before! Always stretch also some minutes after the session to avoid shortened muscles. Pay attention to the things listed above about stretching.