- To keep your spine healthy, it is important to protect the most vulnerable parts of your spine: the neck and low back. These areas are most flexible and prone to injury. Keep the lower abdominal muscles slightly engaged and lengthen the chest and hips away from it. By keeping your head stacked directly over your spine and elongating through your head and pelvis, you protect both the neck and low back.
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As any football player will tell you, once the knees go, it's a whole different ball game. Protect your joints: ankles, knees, hips, shoulders and elbows.
Keep the thighs contracted and notice that your kneecaps must track directly over your ankles at all times. Do not bring your arm back farther than the shoulder joint will allow. In that danger zone, you can dislocate the shoulder.
Wear proper shoes to protect your ankles (such as high tops for basketball) and do not lock out any of the joints. -
In any sports or exercise, engage the large muscle groups, such as the pectoralis major of the chest, and the trapezius and latissimus on the back. Engage your quadriceps and hamstrings. To serve in tennis, you use the legs, upper body and abdominals. In a bench press, use the chest, back and shoulder muscles. Do not arch the vulnerable lower back.
If you lift from the low back in resistance training, you risk injury to very small muscles there (quadratus laboratorum.
Always think of using the large muscles to do the work rather than moving from the spine or from torquing the joints: execute the jump shot using the power of the leg muscles and abs, not twisting at the ankles or knees.
