Five Exercises To Avoid

By Wesley McDermott

There are five main exercises that are commonly done by those who are doing exercise workouts, however if you do these, you are likely to hurt yourself. You can avoid these five exercises and avoid injuring yourself. There are exercises that are good, some that are great and those that if done can really injure you—it’s best to avoid these exercises all together and save yourself a lot of pain that can last for months or even years.

Upright Rows

Upright rows are exercises that are done to develop shoulders and traps. The exercise is done by holding a barbell or dumbbell in front of you closely with an overhand grip and then pull the weight up to your chest close to your body, leading with your elbows. This is one of the most harmful exercises that you can do for your shoulders. The main problem with the upright row exercise is the positioning of your arms when performing the movement—the movement is called internal rotation.

The internal rotation is not bad for your shoulders, but when you add resistance and raising your arms to the mix, you create some problems. When you raise the weight in an upright row, a tendon in your shoulder gets pinched by the bones in your shoulder. While this may not hurt immediately, you are wearing down and damaging your tendon which can cause a lifetime of pain and suffering. It is possible that you may not know you have a problem with this tendon in your shoulder until one day, it snaps. It is best to stick with dumbbell presses, military presses and other raising exercises throughout your exercise workouts that are safer for your shoulders.

Behind the neck pulldowns

The behind the neck pulldown exercises are done to workout your back muscles. The exercise is very proficient at working your back muscles but the problem with this exercise is what it can do to your shoulders. The behind the neck pulldown creates an external rotation, which is opposite to the movement that causes internal rotation. The behind the neck pulldown is done by rotating your shoulders as much as possible, which puts them in a very delicate position.

During this exercise, your rotator cuff is not in a good position to provide stability to your joint and injuries result because of this. Another point to be made about this exercise is that most people don’t have enough shoulder flexibility to maintain a straight line of pull down behind the neck, which means they are bending their neck forward to do the movement, which can cause neck and shoulder strain during your fitness workouts.

Behind the neck shoulder presses

This exercise also provides the same shoulder issue as the behind the neck pull down. In order to do this exercise, you have to externally rotate your shoulders to the maximum, which again, puts the shoulders in a delicate and vulnerable position which easily leads to rotator cuff injuries. Flexibility during this exercise in your fitness workout is also an issue as most people have to tilt their head forward to get the bar behind it which greatly increases the likelihood of injury.

Stiff legged dead-lifts on a bench

A stiff legged dead lift on a bench is actually one of the exercises that is good movement for your hamstrings, glutes and lower back and is a good addition to your fitness workout. The problem with this exercise is when the exercise is done standing on a block or bench.

In order to protect your lower back from injury and maintain an adequate stretch on your hamstrings, you should maintain an arch in your lower back while executing the movement. Maintaining this arch in your back is very difficult when you are stretching towards the floor with barbell weight pulling you down. A lot of stress and tension results on your connective tissue and spinal cord bones rather than the supporting muscles which stabilize the spine. While this exercise is great for your hamstrings, you are compromising the support structure of your lower back.

Sit-ups

Regular sit-up exercises done on the floor should be avoided especially if you enjoy having a pain-free lower back. When you do a sit up as part of your exercise workout, the actual mechanics of the movement coupled with the position of your body, give a lot of the torque and movement of the exercise to your lower back. Your hip flexors also pull directly on your spine to raise your torso off the floor which leads to strain in your lower back area.

To top it all off, the abdominal muscles that you are attempting to target don’t actually get the real work out—they just hold your torso steady while your hip flexors do all the work. You are better off to do other exercises, such as crunches, ball crunches and cable crunches which directly target your abs without giving extra stress and tension to your lower back.

These fitness workouts all have counter measures to your health and sustaining an injury while doing one of these exercises can put you in a great deal of pain and set you back in your exercise workouts.