By Marie Ashworth

When you’re about to work out, it’s wise to remove your jewellery and watch. We all want to be fashionable and jewellery makes a strong statement of personal expression but “eye-catching” items can catch on equipment and may even tear your skin.

Pumping iron means pumping blood throughout your system and extremities, such as hands, tend to swell making rings become uncomfortable. You might have real problems removing a ring from a swollen finger. If you are not taking in adequate electrolytes, the imbalance in salt levels between the blood stream, the cells, and the extracellular spaces essentially results in a trapping of the water in the tissues as the sodium is lost in sweat. The same thing can happen if you are taking in too much salt. For those interested, look up "sodium-potassium pump" in a textbook of physiology to get you started."

Jewellery and watches could be scratched, banged, bent, and mangled. Worse, you could lose gemstones from their mounts and never even be aware of your loss.

So, do yourself a favour; remove all your valuables and put them away in a pouch. Place the pouch into your gym bag and lock your locker. You would be amazed at how many times I have found rings and watches at the bottom of a gym locker!

Bottom line: your jewellery will be safe and you will never have trouble finding it.

(Italized text taken from walking.about.com)

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