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I’ve been personal training for 15 years or more now and I quickly learned that each of my many clients is an individual with very unique wants and needs and that means that they each need to be trained differently, according to their fitness goals and their exercise and medical history. This means that, more often than not, my personal training clients are each prescribed a different workout; there are no cookie-cutter workouts routines at my personal training studio! And while this means that that I use a wide variety of exercises depending on what the workout is designed to achieve, there are some exercises that I just won’t use. You see, even in the healthy pursuit of fitness, there are some exercises where the risk simply outweighs the benefits. The risk versus benefit equation is an important consideration in personal training. Some workouts are very effective but also very high risk exercises. Yes – if you manage to stay the course you will probably get great results but, on the flip side, you may also end up injured and end up worse off than when you started. Without naming names, some types of workouts actively promote things like high-repetition Olympic lifting and high repetition plyometrics which are effective metabolic exercises BUT the risks of performing these high-speed and very technical movements when fatigue is tapping you on the shoulder means that any benefits are far outweighed by a not-insubstantial risk of injury. And so, to that end, here is a brief list of exercises I believe involve a greater than necessary risk and should not be part of your workout routine. Of course, there will be people reading this who say “Oh I’ve been doing that exercise for years and I’ve never been injured”. To that I respond – good for you but, really, why take the risk when there are equally effective exercises that are considerably much safer? It just makes good personal training sense to err on the side of caution. Barbell behind the neck press Commonly performed by bodybuilders, the behind the neck press is a short-cut to damaged shoulders. If you consider that your shoulders are involved in just about every single upper body movement you perform it makes good sense to try and look after them as much as you can. Behind the neck presses, because of the extreme external shoulder rotation, places a tremendous strain on your rotator cuff muscles. This small group of muscles helps to keep your shoulder joint stable and, once injured, is really hard to fix. Very few people have the necessary mobility to perform this exercise safely and for most, the behind the neck press actually involves jutting their heads forward unnaturally. If you care about your shoulder health, skip this exercise and press a) to the front or b) use dumbbells. Lat pull downs behind the neck This exercise makes it onto the “danger” list for much the same reason as behind the neck presses; excessive and unnecessary shoulder strain. Unless you have the shoulder flexibility of a gymnast, chances are you aren’t even doing this exercise behind the neck but are, in fact, jutting your head forward instead. Also, ask yourself this question: when, in nature, do you ever pull an object down behind your head from above? I wager the answer is never. Not only does it harm your shoulders, it has no functional carryover to everyday life. Unless, that is, you stick your head though the rungs of a ladder as you climb up and down! No; I thought not... Save your shoulders by only pulling down to the front of your chest. Upright rows This is a bit of a sacred cow in many gyms and is a well-known shoulder builder. But, the extreme medial or inward rotation of the shoulder combined with the heavy loads commonly associated with this exercise means that, again, it’s a shoulder injury waiting to happen. Don’t believe me? Raise your upper arm out to the side so it’s parallel to the floor and bend your elbow to 90 degrees. I’ll bet that your forearm is not hanging down vertically. In fact, you may even find it’s uncomfortable to rotate your arm into a vertical position. This suggests that upright rows really aren’t that great for the majority of exerciser’s shoulders. Don’t take the risk; substitute side lateral raises and shrugs instead. Straight legged sit ups 20 years ago, most people worked their abs with sit-ups performed with their legs straight and their feet anchored under something heavy. Coincidentally, this was also the time that many people made the connection that “sit-ups make my back hurt”. Sit-ups with straight, anchored legs place a tremendous shearing force on your lumbar spine. Why? Because in this position your very powerful hip flexor muscles try to help your abs and they are connected to your lumbar spine. Bending your legs and un-anchoring your feet remove your hip flexors from sit-ups and change the exercise to something more akin to a crunch which is a much more spine-friendly exercise and also works your abs more effectively. ANY weight lifting exercise with a rounded back Let’s cut to chase on this one – lifting with a rounded back is a quick way to severely and even permanently hurt your lower back. Your spine is supported by muscles and ligaments and there are strong but not indestructible fibrous discs between each vertebra. As soon as your spine is rounded and loaded, the passive structures of your spine are put under tremendous load and these structures are non-elastic and avascular. That simply means they don’t stretch and have little or no blood supply. If injured, as rounded back lifting usually results, these structures are very slow to heal if they heal at all. A blown disc may need to be surgically repaired and even then 100 percent recovery is not certain. Instead, maintain a strong arch in your lower back and ignore calls for your “back to be straight”. A straight back is only inches from being rounded whereas an arched back is the polar opposite. Any injury you get with your back arched is likely to be muscular and while painful, should heal in a few short weeks. Ligament or disc injuries though; that’s a different matter all together. Exercise should be healthful and beneficial so, to ensure your workouts are doing you good and not harm, give these exercises a wide birth. Whenever I’m personal training, my focus is on getting great results with minimal risk so remember, don’t just train hard but also train safe. Author Bio: Mark Darco is a professional personal trainer with more than 14 years experience and has worked with hundreds of clients. He has successfully completed multiple certifications and continues to provide top class fitness training to clients of all ages in the NYC area.
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