3 Tips For Protecting Your Body When Doing Heavy Lifting At Work
If you have a job that requires you to do a lot of manual labor, whether it’s working in construction or doing commercial loading and unloading, knowing how to safely complete the physical tasks given to you is vital for your health and wellbeing. Otherwise, you could end up getting hurt and limiting your ability to work as you once could.
To help ensure that this doesn’t happen to you go on a lifting supervisor course and here are three tips for protecting your body when doing heavy lifting at work.
Keep From Bending Or Twisting
The first thing you have to know about lifting something heavy is how to actually get it safely into your hands.
When you’re trying to pick something up that’s heavy, you’re going to want to try to keep yourself from bending too much. Especially if the thing you’re picking up is on the floor, you’ll want to be sure that you’re using your knees to lift this thing up off the floor rather than bending with your back. If you bend over to lift something, there’s a good chance that it could hurt you back.
Once you’ve safely lifted the heavy item into your arms, you’ll want to make sure that you’re not bending your back too far in the opposite direction to compensate for the weight, as this could also cause you to tweak your back or pull a muscle. And when you’re either lifting the weight or moving with it, you’ll want to keep from twisting your trunk too much, because this can hurt your back as well.
Don’t Move Until You’re Ready
With the load lifted up in your arms, you’ll then have to move that load to wherever you need it to be.
Depending on how heavy the load is, you might be tempted to just move as quickly as possible to get it over with. However, if you try to move when you don’t have a good grip on the load, you could wind up straining your muscles or dropping the heavy item. So before you start moving, make sure the weight is secure in your arms. Try to hold the item as close to your body as possible to put the least amount of strain in your arms and back.
Take Necessary Breaks
If you’re going to be moving heavy items for a long period of time as part of your work day, it’s vital that you give your body the break that it needs between each load. If you do these strenuous, repetitive tasks too often without a break, you could put your health at risk. So make sure your muscles have been given a break after lifting something heavy.
If you lift heavy items at work, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you protect your body as you do so.
