Are all exercises good for you? I wish I could have said yes to it, but sadly NO! Not all moves can be treated as equal, in fact some exercises do more harm than good. Shocked? Read on to find out!
Exercising as a whole is a great thing to keep your body active and moving, but if you think that all the exercises you are doing are good for you, then you are terribly wrong here. Some exercises, especially when executed using improper form are extremely bad for your body. So, instead of trying to be a who shows off 400 pound deadlift at the gym, exercise safely and smartly, else you will end up injuring yourself or running your body out of compassion.
In order to help you prevent painful injuries at gym, we have compiled a list of 5 worst training exercises that you have been performing all this while.
Machine Leg Extensions
How often do you kick out your legs while just sitting around? Probably not at all. So why you are doing so in the gym? There is no functional benefit of machine leg extensions, as they do not use your body’s natural movements in a way that applies to natural world motions. Also, your knees aren’t designed in a way to carry that much weight from that angle and it may cause some serious injury. Even if you think that your knees are in good health, there is no point taking risk with an ineffective exercise which is not even functional.
Instead of machine leg extensions, go for squats, deadlifts, lunges and step-ups as they are excellent to train your quads. Apart from quads, they will also strengthen your glutes and hamstrings.
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Behind-The-Head Lat Pulldowns
Trust us, behind the head lat pull down is one exercise you should never do. Whenever you are performing lat pulldowns, the bar should always be in front of your body. If you are trying to be creative with the placement of bar then there is a shoulder injury that is waiting to happen. Pulling the bar down or putting it behind your head or neck places puts extreme stress and strain on the front of your shoulder joints, thus increasing the chances of severe shoulder injury.
Because pulldowns are your traps’ main moves, focus on keeping the bar toward your collarbone. There is no need to bring the bar all the way to your chest, instead move your body in that direction.
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Smith Machine Squats
Some might think that squatting on a Smith machine is a safer alternative to regular squat rack, but in reality is its one of the worst exercises of all time. When you lower yourself into a squat using a Smith machine your back stays straight and perpendicular to the ground, which then stresses and compresses your vertebrae. Also, because you have to lean back into the bar to make use of Smith machine, you end up overtly stressing your knees, your glutes and hamstrings are not fully contracted and you are not training your core at all.
Body weight and weighted squats are any given day better then Smith machine squats as they train your entire lower body effectively, functionally and most importantly without over-stressing your joints.
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Triceps Dips
The whole idea behind performing triceps dips is to train your triceps, but you can easily end up overloading the small muscles in your shoulder that make up your rotator cuff. Lifting your body weight with your upper arms behind your torso is a great risk of injury. Once these muscles are damage it will become difficult to perform even the smallest of your daily task, like even washing your hair will become painful.
If you want to tone your triceps then first thing is to keep your arms in front of your body, after that try performing cable pushdowns, close grip bench presses and triceps pushups instead. However for advanced bodybuilders, it’s a fantastic option
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Behind The Neck Shoulder Press
The problem with behind the neck shoulder presses is the same as with behind the head pulldowns. Here for the movement you have to externally rotate the shoulders to the max, which places your shoulders in a very vulnerable position and might even result in the strain in your rotator cuff muscles. Also, it is not necessary that everyone has the same shoulder flexibility to achieve a straight line required for this movement. Bodybuilders need to to tilt their head forward so that they can get the bar behind, which in itself adds greatly to the possibility of an injury.
Instead focus on military press and dumbbell press for your shoulder pressing movements.
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Now that you have enough information about the worst workouts at the gym, make sure you do not end up committing these mistakes the next time you hit the gym.
