Injuries (part 1 of 2)

Avoiding injuries
Injuries suck.
And that's pretty much it, so avoiding exactly that should be one of the top priorities for every bodybuilder. There are a few time-proven tricks to drastically decrease the risk of injury, and with a little dash of common sense into the mix you'll probably be doing fine.

Warmup
Before you do anything else, five minutes on a stationary bike is a good start. Then you have time to raise your body temperature, getting the blood flowing and generally preparing the body for activity. This will also make your blood pressure more even when you start throwing the weights around - instead of having this huge leap from rest to max effort in seconds, you let yourself adjust gradually. Besides, it's good for a mental preparation as you can use those five minutes on the bike to rehearse the program ahead of you, visualizing how you go from one exercise to the next, what poundages you'll use, etc. After the biking, do some light stretching.

Then you're ready to hit the weights. But even though you've had a general body warmup on the bike, you should do an additional warmup-set for the muscle which you're about grind the last ounce of power out of. Now, here's a dilemma - you're supposed to warm up the muscle to prepare it for the training, but at the same time you must avoid exhausting it! Personally, I've found the best way to save the power is to go about 50% of max weight and do 8-10 nice and slow reps, focusing on strict form.

Stretching
During the training you should do some stretching between each set, but as opposed to the warm-up stretch after the stationary bike, this stretch is specifically aimed at the muscle you're currently working. Most importantly, by stretching you get fresh blood into the muscle, giving you more power for the next set. The reason for this is because the muscle works by contraction, and while lifting heavy weights and pushing it to the limit, it contracts so forcefully it STAYS somewhat contracted after you've put the weights down. Then the fresh blood can't readily access the muscle, flush away the lactic acid buildup (that comes with anaerobic work), or bring new nutrinents as "fuel." Think of the stretching between sets as a pit-stop for refueling between each race / set.

After you've done your sets for the muscle, it's time for the last, more thorough stretch.

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