While training hard and heavy may be awesome for your muscles, it can be trouble for the health of your joints and connective tissue. This is simply the reality of intense weight training, and while there are no guarantees that you will be able to completely avoid getting injured, you can certainly take specific steps to lessen the chance.

If you don't take care of your muscles you will never succed in bodybuilding. And an injury is the last thing you need. In this article, you will find the 5 golden rules to avoid injuries during your training.

1) Always perform a thorough warmup. A proper warmup is the single best thing you can do to minimize your risk of injury. This simple 15-20 minute process will prepare your mind and body for the hard work to come by increasing blood flow into the surrounding connective tissue and by lubricating your joints. I would recommend that you perform 5 minutes of light cardiovascular exercise before each workout followed by 4-5 warmup sets for your first major exercise of the routine.

2) Do it right. If you don't know if the way you're performing your routine is the right way, find a trainer and ask him for the proper form and technique in order to keep the stress off of your joints. Because, if you're doing the exercise wrong, you'll be more vulnerable to injuries.

3) Compete only with yourself. There may be a lot of huge guys in your gym. If you try to compete with them, if you want to train in the same way that them...it's a sure thing that you'll get an injurie. There'll be a time when you'll be able to do that, until that time, the record you have to beat is your own record.

4) Never try to over-train. If you feel that you can't handle it anymore, the best thing to do is stop and take some rest until the next set. This situation, perhaps is the most injury-prone that you can ever get yourself into.

5) Never ignore your aches and pains. When you're motoring along through a training program and are making progress from week to week, the idea of quitting just seems impossible. This can sometimes lead us to ignore those obvious injuries and pretend as if they aren't really there as we often "work through" the pain and hope that it magically disappears.

More often than not, it will only get worse. If you feel that something definitely isn't right and can sense that you probably shouldn't be training, get the problem checked out by a professional and then take the proper measures to heal. While it may hurt your progress in the short term, the overall long-term effect will be a positive one.