10 Exercises All Men Should AVOID!

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How many times have you done an exercise and then as soon as you finish you feel pain? You might feel it in your lower back or your shoulder,

but you find yourself thinking did I do something wrong or does this exercise just suck. Well, it really isn’t always you.

There are a lot of exercises out there that are plain bad for you and they only continue to exist just because they’ve been passed down from one misinformed gym to the next,

and no one’s been smart enough to realize that these common exercises are no good. So today we’re going over 10 exercises that all men should avoid, and these exercises aren’t only exclusive to men.

Women should avoid these exercises as well, it’s just that in this video we’ll be sticking to exercises that I usually find men doing wrong.

The very first one that I want to start with is actually a group of exercises that guys are drawn to like moths to a flame. I’m talking about all the selectorizor ab machines at your local gym.

These machines are not only a waste of time, but they are also dangerous for your lower back. All these selectorizor ab machines are locked into a range of motion,

meaning that your joints and your disks can’t travel down their natural path, you can only travel down the path that the machine has set for you.

Even if you adjust the machine to your body perfectly, which by the way is very hard to do, but even if you somehow had a machine customized for your body

you can still easily run into lower back issues because you’re still locked in a set range of motion throughout the entire exercise.

The reason is once again due to the fact that you’re locked into a range of motion. The core’s main responsibility is stabilization.

And it’s important to improve your functional core strength because your core isn’t only responsible for stabilizing your trunk but it stabilizes your whole body.

It is the bridge that connects your lower body to your upper body. When you’re locked in a range of motion you take all of the stabilization normally required for ab exercises out of the movement.

The really ironic part is that those abdominal stabilizer muscles that you’re not working on these machines are very important to strengthen in order to prevent the lower back injury that you’ll likely experience on one of these machines.

Due to the fact that you’re not working your stabilizers, you’re missing out on all of those deep tissue abdominal muscles like your transverse ab dominus

and your only targeting mostly your rectus ab dominus which is the very outer layer six-pack looking muscle.

The transverse ab dominus is very important to work because not only does it help prevent injury, but it also pulls your stomach in keeping everything nice and tight giving you that flat stomach look.

If you want to make your ab exercises tougher use weights by simply holding a dumbbell or a plate either behind your head or across your chest while doing regular traditional ab exercises.

Once again if you don’t know where to start with exercises like stability ball crunches, declined situps, and hanging knee tucks.

The next exercise you should avoid is the behind the head shoulder press. First off there is absolutely no advantage to going behind your head.

None. Even though I’m sure some old school guys will be disagreeing with me in the comments below you can research this yourself

and you’ll find that when you go behind the head you’re still targeting the same muscles that you would if you went in front of your head

and there’s no advantage when going behind your head that will allow you to build your shoulder muscle faster.

Instead what will happen when you go behind the head is you’ll be putting your shoulders in a very compromised position.

To go behind your head you’ll have to externally rotate your arms outward putting your rotator cuff in a very unstable and weak position.

This will immediately require you to lower the weight that you’re using for your shoulders. This already creates a huge disadvantage when compared with just going in front of your head with a heavier weight.

By lifting a heavier weight in front of your head you’ll get more strength improvements and more muscle gains over time.

On top of that in that compromised position that has no advantage, your very likely to hurt your rotator cuff.

Most people already have very tight protracted shoulders because they’re sitting slouched over all day.

To compensate for a lack of shoulder flexibility and mobility people that try this exercise will bend their neck forward to get the bar behind their head increasing the risk of injury not only to the shoulder joint but also to the neck joint.

And again keep in mind the guys that you see performing this old school exercise at the gym are doing it for no reason because there are no proven benefits for going behind the head. Only risks and disadvantages.

So when you do your presses simply keep the barbell in front of your face the whole time, trust me your shoulders and your neck will thank you and you’ll also see more results.

Next up is the smith machine, and yes the smith machine itself can be used effectively as a supplement to your workout,

but the way that most guys use it is wrong and should be avoided. A perfect example is using the smith machine for squats.

 With the smith machine, due to the fact that it looks like a barbell in a squat rack it’s very easy to forget that it is not a free weight exercise.

Meaning it does not have a free range of motion… at all. Just like most selectorized equipment, it is locked into a range of motion,

which like I said earlier will immediately take the stabilization benefits away from whatever exercise you do when using the smith machine.

Specifically, with a smith machine squat you’re putting yourself into a very unnatural squatting pattern.

First of all the whole time that you’ll be doing this exercise, you’ll be leaning your weight back. quat This would be impossible to do with a regular barbell because you would simply fall backward.

Rather than allowing your back to bend as you come down your back is forced to stay perfectly straight,

which to most beginners might make it seem like it would decrease the risk of a back injury, but it only increases it.

Especially because your hips are also not allowed to freely move throughout this movement.

A squat is a very natural movement that was performed daily before the invention of toilets. During a squat your hips and your back should be allowed to curve and bend around its natural range of motion.

Another exercise that men should avoid is one that I actually find women doing even more than men. The hip abduction and adduction machines.

There is no natural movement that would load your hips with the kind of heavyweight that you’ll be lifting on these machines in that movement pattern.

This machine is known for causing serious lower back injuries because it is not normal to lift a heavy load in this position.

These muscles are normally simply used to stabilize the body when you stand, walk, or run. However,

almost everybody I’ve ever seen use these machines at the gym is super proud of the heavyweight load they’re able to lift in this very unnatural position.

If you’re really concerned about working your adductors and your abductors, then perform exercises with resistance bands while standing rather than using these two seriously dangerous machines.

The problem with this one is that when you rotate your spine, your hips are designed to rotate as well.

Once again due to the fact that the machine is locked into a range of motion, your hips cannot rotate properly putting excessive pressure on your spine.

You’re a lot more likely to end up with a messed up back rather than a nice set of abs when doing this machine.

There are many far better ways to work your obliques without risking a back injury such as cable wood chops, and side planks.

Next is the upright row. To perform this exercise you would usually use a barbell and with an overhand grip and raise the bar up towards your chin with your elbows flaring out.

The problem with the upright row is that as you come up your arm rotates internally more and more to complete the movement.

Due to this internal rotation in combination with this usually being a heavy weight bearing exercise many people experience a shoulder injury or impingement when doing this exercise.

In fact even performing the exercise correctly will immediately put you into an impingement position

because it has the rotator cuff moving in an unnatural way especially when you add weight to the movement.

Physical therapists will put you in a very similar position to the upright row to test for impingement.

So you don’t want to be doing an exercise designed to test for impingement especially not for reps and sets with a heavy weight load.

Over time it can and will lead to an overuse injury. Also, there are far more effective exercises with far fewer risks involved.

First off you can raise your hands above your elbows as you come up for this exercise, rather than having your elbows above your hands.

If you want to work on the front and later head a regular lateral raise will usually give you more than an upright row without the risk.

If you want to strictly work the front of your shoulder then you can lean back in a bench and do inclined frontal raises.

For the traps, you can do shrugs. All of these exercises can provide more benefits without the risk involved with upright rows.

The next problematic exercise is the lat pulldown behind the head. Too many guys in the gym must be thinking they’re rocky balboa when they rep it out on this exercise.

The lat pulldown behind the head is bad for all the same reasons that make behind the head shoulder presses bad.

Once again just to get the bar behind your head your going to increase the chances of a rotator cuff injury because you need to rotate your arms externally as far as they can go.

Again due to the fact that most people already have a lack of flexibility in their shoulders you’ll also increase the risk of injury to not only your shoulders but also to your neck.

And finally, the nail in the coffin is that once again you won’t be able to lift as much weight as a regular lat pulldown meaning you’ll be building less strength and muscle over time while risking unnecessary shoulder and neck injuries.

This is another exercise with nothing but disadvantages. Who would’ve thought that when an exercise is done the way the exercise is meant to be done you get more results.

The next one that I want to go over i already know is going to make a lot of people in the comment section mad,

 because it does not allow your muscles and joints to perform in a functional manner and puts a huge amount of stress on your knees and lower back.

When you naturally lift the weight with your the legs your back is allowed to move freely, but on the leg press, your back is the pinned against the pad.

Because you’re once again locked in a range of motion it has very similar problems as performing the smith machine squats.

Some people are actually able to get away with doing this exercise without too much of an issue,

but I’ve seen an equal amount of people hurt their backs because your back winds up in an awkward flexed position the whole time.

so I recommend that you stick to those whenever possible. Speaking of useless leg exercises you should avoid leg extensions and leg curls unless you’re rehabing an injury or unless you’re looking to be a bodybuilder.

These two exercises don’t serve much of a purpose. They are not functional, they put excess stress on your knee, and there are far better alternatives that can help you build more functional leg muscle in less time.

They also isolate the knee joint which is very unnatural because whenever you normally work your knee joint in real life youre also working your hip joint.

The worst part is that all the strength that you build from this exercise cannot be applied mechanically to most movements that you would do in real life.

The last exercise that I want you to look out for is the back hyperextension machine. Even though there is a safer way to perform this exercise a lot of people do it completely wrong and they wind up hurting there lower back in the process.

The spine is not meant to extend past the point of neutral at any time. With this exercise, so many people extend their backs past that point on every rep that they come up and they wind up with a strained lower back or a full out injury to their disks.

Even when doing this exercise properly you can hurt your lower back just by performing reps with a weight held against your chest.

For that reason, if you do try this exercise be very careful and start with just your bodyweight to avoid a lower back injury.

That’s it guys, I really hope this exercise has helped you out And if you’re not exactly sure about which exercises you should be doing to get the fastest results possible visit my website.

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