Fitness Solutions for You blog

If you have any questions about what these exercises are and how to do them (some people refer to them by other names), feel free to e-mail me for further explanation.

1.) Squats in the Smith Machine

While anyone who knows what they are doing will heavily endorse the inclusion of squats in a workout regimen, performing them in the Smith Machine is not safe.  Squats provide myriad benefits as they stimulate the largest muscles in your body all at once, which releases large amounts of growth hormones into your body, stimulating muscles that aren’t even stimulated during the execution of the squat, while taxing and stimulating your core and duplicating a real world applicable movement.  However, performing squats in the Smith Machine is not even close to a substitute for squats done with a barbell.

Not that the Smith Machine is a poor piece of equipment; its proper use is not squats.  The Smith Machine is essentially a barbell that is affixed to a set of vertical rails, taking away the flexibility of the movement and forcing you to conform to the movement of the rack, rather than the barbell conforming to your movement, the way it should be.  Doing squats in the Smith Machine takes the flexibility out of the movement and puts unnecessary strain on the ankles and vertebrae and places a shearing force on the knees.

2.) Leg extensions

Similar to doing squats in the Smith Machine, performing leg extensions is very bad for you.  Doing leg extensions puts large amounts of shearing forces on your knees and can even cause air to form under your kneecaps, which, as you might imagine, is not a good thing.  Your knees, shoulders, and elbows are some of the joints most prone to injury, and you should put as many safeguards in place as you can to prevent injury.  Leg extensions place a shearing force on your knees at the bottom of the repetition after a large strain has been put on your knees with no support at the bottom of your feet, then rapidly removed.

All of the strain goes to your knees at the bottom of the repetition.  You can help decrease this force by never going all the way down (maintain resistance) until the end of the set, or by doing a lower weight with higher repetitions than other exercises.  But you can avoid all of it by simply not doing them.  Leg extensions provide the most direct quadratic stimulation of any exercise, so it is a shame that they are so bad for you, but there are many close replacements that do not harm your knees.

3.) Kickbacks

While there is nothing wrong with kickbacks, per se, there are just much better alternatives.  Kickbacks are performed by leaning over a bench, generally with a knee and a hand placed on the bench, with the opposite leg on the ground and the opposite hand holding a dumbbell, initially letting the dumbbell hang and fully extending your arm while performing the repetition.  This movement provides for very minimal leverage.  Performing cable pushdowns or overhead extensions provide for much more leverage, allowing you to do more weight and thus stimulating your muscles better.  I find that when you’re performing the motion with a weight that your triceps are capable of doing, it is very hard to not involve your shoulders in the motion, taking away from the tricep involvement due to poor leverage.

4.) Crunches/Sit-ups

I really hesitate to put this down, but I think it belongs.  There is nothing inherently wrong or dangerous with doing sit-ups or crunches; I’ll just politely refer to them as “not using your time optimally.”  Normal sit-ups and crunches simply do not provide enough resistance.

Think about it–are there any other exercises that allow you to do such a light weight that you can perform dozens of repetitions and still provide sufficient muscle stimulation?  No.  Again, there is nothing wrong with the sit-up or crunch movement; it is just suggested that you do crunches on a decline, on a machine that provides resistance (one of the few times I will advocate machines over free-weights), or with a dumbbell on your stomach to increase the resistance.  While there are many superior alternatives to crunches and sit-ups, some people simply cannot do them.  If you don’t have the muscle developed, or some health reason prevents you from doing them, don’t strain yourself. But if you can do more than about 20 sit-ups you should provide some sort of resistance or you will not be maximizing the benefits of your time.

5.) Any pressing or pulling motion done behind the neck

Some people do shoulder press movements or pulldown motions with the end (or beginning, depending on the exercise) being behind your neck.  Very few people have the shoulder flexibility required to properly and safely perform pulling and pushing motion behind the neck.  Performing these motions behind the neck can potentially cause tears in the rotator cuff and nerve impingement in your shoulders.  Depending on the motion, you can put the scapula at an extreme angle, further exposing yourself to possible injury.  Like kickbacks, these motions also give you less leverage compared to similar exercises.  Pulldowns and shoulder press motions done in front of you give you more leverage, which allows you to do more weight than the behind-the-neck counterpart.

Tags: weightlifting

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 7:47 am and is filed under weightlifting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.