So if you really want to injure yourself while training or working out, make sure you do some or all of what is listed below. Chances are, you are doing some of these things anyway. (By the way, if you want to stay healthy, please avoid all of the list below).

10 Ways to Injure Yourself while Training:

10. What ever you do, DO NOT warm up at all before you lift weights. Go into the gym and your session cold, and attempt no warm up. However, if you insist, load up the bar with only 30% of what you are going to lift and push through that for a few reps. That’s the most you should do. (If you need any guidance in doing this correctly, just go to your local gym and watch for the guys in the extra tight wife-beaters. Scope them out and follow their programming. No warm up, just 18 sets of extremely heavy weight. )

9. Perform squats with a lot of weight on the bar while not being strong enough to even squat you own body weight correctly. How do you know when you are doing this correctly? Your back will be flexed on the way down in a very dangerous position, and your knees will start to bend inward (note: Knees are never supposed to bend inward), and each end of the bar will move up and down as you struggle to get to a starting position. OH yea, you won’t even get close to a 90 degree range of motion because you know you won’t be able to get back up.

8. When you are finished with number 9 from above, add more weight and do it again!!!

7. Perform HEAVY or even not so heavy lat pull downs, behind your neck. Make sure you have an unusually wide grip and put maximum external rotation torque on your shoulders. Do multiple sets. If you shoulders hurt, by all means, increase the weight.

6. Grab a 25-35 pound plate and hold it to your chest while you do 3 sets of 10 hyper-extensions for your low back. Go up as far as you can and all the way back down so your head is close to the floor. Even when your back is screaming in pain and tightness, keep doing them. Your back must be weak, so that is why it hurts, right? More is better here too!

5. Perform walking, dynamic lunges with weights in your hands, while bending your waist forward so all of the weight is distributed over your knees. Keep lunging even though you struggle just to stay upright because you lack the balance to do one lunge correctly without weight. If your knees hurt during and/or after, you are doing them right!

4. Load the leg press machine with as many 45’s that you can find. After all, you CAN do it with all of these 45’s, so you must be strong. That’s a lot of weight after all. Just look at it. It’s impressive. Even though you can’t properly squat over 250 pounds and your doctor has advised you NOT to squat because it is bad for you back, do leg presses instead. The loaded and flexed position on your low back will do it wonders.

3. Make sure you lift heavy every single day. Don’t take a day off, and never change up your set/rep routine. Keep lifting and keep adding weight, no matter what. Do this routine for the next 4 months, only taking Saturday and Sunday off. After all, those are your drinking days.

2. Run on the treadmill for 45 minutes in the same shoes you wear around the house and everywhere else. Don’t worry about your shins, or feet hurting. After all, that is normal. Keep running for 45 minutes plus each day. Why not? You should be losing tons of fat right? Its been working so far hasn’t it? Its also great for your feet, shins, knees, and low back.

1. Hire a personal trainer at your local gym, and do all of the same stuff I already mentioned above with your new, expert personal trainer…AND feel good about doing all of it, because after all he/she is an expert right?

Now I will be the first to admit, I have floored clients and clients have lost their lunch while training with me. The difference is, while my training sessions are intense and can make the untrained person hurt or vomit, they have rhyme and reason. There is always a plan and each session is governed by rules and goals. Always!

I watched a trainer last weekend, at the local gym where I workout myself,  bring someone through a workout that was so ridiculously hard and without any kind of structure, that I had to glance away because the look of disappointment on my face would have been more than obvious. The trainer was simply beating this person up in order to give them a “hard workout.” There were dangerous exercises, no proper progressions, way too much overload, and the session did nothing but leave the person hurting and unable to function well afterwards. Since I have no idea what the goals were or what the trainer was trying to do, I gave that person the benefit of the doubt.

Today, while training myself at the same gym, I was able to see this same trainer working with another person. This person was an obvious beginner and did not have much going for them physically at this point (i.e. over-weight, poor mobility, and physical issues.) To my surprise, the trainer used the same exact training program that I witnessed and was used the other day on this person as well. By the end of the session, the person was sitting on the floor and could not move. The interesting thing is that he told the trainer that it was a great workout! Based on what I saw, this poor guy will probably be too sore to do much for the next few days. Worse, he will think he has the greatest trainer in the world because he was left on the floor, exhausted and battered. For whatever reason, many people use that as a mark of whether their trainer is good or not.

In the past 5 months, I have made more personal strength gains than I ever have in my life by doing less. My sessions are no more than 30-40 minutes and I leave feeling good, even though I had a very intense training session… but still enough energy to do what I have to do. My workouts are guided by years of training wisdom and rules, not just seeing how much I can hurt myself. I have also helped to transform clients by doing less, and focusing each session on goals. Not all sessions are created equal and you do not have to be in pain or have to peel you self off of the floor to get a quality session that will give you results.

Think about it, if you grade your trainer on how much pain and torture they can instill on you during a session, I should introduce you to my high school wrestling coach. He will beat you up physically more than any trainer could. He has no training experience, and no background in physiology, but he is one hell of a coach.

Remember, anyone can kick your butt into submission and give you a workout that makes you want to vomit and sore for the next 7 days. Smart trainers give you programs that have a rhyme and reason behind them. Do not get caught up in finding someone that can beat you down and grade that as a “great training session.” You need to train smarter much more than you need to train “harder.” Smart trainers know this.