TOP 5 WORST EXERCISES (Stop Doing These!!)

It's time to take a trip to the iron graveyard and pay our respects to five exercises that belong there and at the same time bow our heads in a moment of silence to all those that got hurt doing them today guys it's time to change all that once and for all what's up guys jeff cavaliere athleanx.com come take a trip with me today to the iron graveyard we're gonna dig up 5 of the worst exercises that you can be doing now what do I call them worse well first of all guys we have to qualify as a physical therapist and professional strength coach I have to judge the merits of an exercise on its risk to benefit ratio when I talk about that I mean if I have overhead throwing athletes pitchers quarterbacks a heavy overhead snatch is not the best exercise choice for me especially when I know I had better options right one bad rep can end a career realizing that I don't have all professional athletes watching my channel I still have to be able to provide you reasons why I feel that these may not be the best options for you even if you're after just aesthetic growth even if you're after just the purposes of looking better ok so what I want to do is break down the five of them then give you my reasons of why I don't feel that are the best options and then let you decide ok no discussion of the worst exercises starts without bringing up the Flies now the controversy can get started right away guys you know how I feel about this exercise we know that a lot of people make the argument that doing chest fly's increases the stretch on the chest right simply not true because we know that the origin insertion of the chest prevents that from happening we know that with the chest we can actually feel where it goes if you put your hand across your upper chest you can feel where it inserts over here onto your upper arm basically when we're here or we're here once we get to the bottom of what will be a benchpress this is this is the maximum amount we get on the stretch we get on the chest so if we open our arm up over even further that doesn't do anything it doesn't add a any extra stretch there's no more excursion here this muscle well we are feeling is a stretch on the coracobrachialis which actually comes here down to here now we can see if the arm were to go further back that that increases the stretch here on that muscle but what are we doing here chest flies or coracobrachialis flies we're not and we've opened up the arm when we increase the load that's out here and increase the length of the lever arm that could potentially cause one bad rep one bad overload any causes to have a torn PEC again if you're doing it for the adduction that we get from a chest fly which is a great reason to do it there are better options as a matter of fact why don't we get on our feet like we try to with athlean-x and do something more like the 3d cable crossover all right but that's number one now let's go on to the shoulders number two are behind the neck shoulder press we all know that there are a lot of ways that we can push a bar up overhead I'm telling you that there's a better way especially when we're looking at the health of our shoulders in the risk to benefit ratio we know that any way we can get that bar up overhead is going to overload those shoulders but the plane that we're doing it in can make all the difference so when we talk about a behind the neck shoulder press might issue with this guys is that we're pushing in an abnormal plane of motion when we look at the orientation of our shoulders in the joint the glenohumeral joint is our shoulder joint the ball and socket they will angle forward and a slight degree forward like this so basically if the ball and socket moves inside that the natural plane of motion is to be slightly ahead of us okay slightly out in this direction that way if we go straight out to the side not only are we causing the rolling of the ball in the socket to be abnormal but we're also causing an increase in the likelihood for impingement the reason for that is right here where I can show you basically we have our ball and socket like this okay if we take the ball in there and we go to move it up in them in the forward the correct plane you can see that it rolls inside that socket with plenty of room to come all the way up to the top okay if we have our arm way out to the side over here can't seem to be hard to show but basically the arms going to be going up this way if we have it there because the socket is rounded here we start to hit the lateral portion of the socket right away okay as it goes up that causes impingement secondly when we're able to get our arms in front of us and push straight up we're able to activate a nice balance between the upper traps and the serratus anterior what that does is it causes the upper traps to pull this way the serratus to pull down and around this way so that our shoulder blade actually tips by tipping here we increase again the amount of space that we get in here for the scapular before that the glenohumeral head so lots of reasons why we don't really want to be pressing way back here and it's just as good to get our elbows in front of us and press up next up upright rows sticking with the shoulder and sticking with a concept that I've covered in depth in another video the upright row is one of the worst exercises I feel you can do for your shoulders especially again because we have so many better options and small tweaks can lead to big and positive changes the problem I have with the upright row is the nature of the exercise itself puts us into an impingement position again as a physical therapist if you were to come into my clinic and I was going to test you for shoulder impingement I will put your arms in this position literally like this and push down okay push down right here that is exactly the position of an upright roll and I don't care how wide you grab the bar if you're gonna grab the bar the weight is pulling your hands down and you're trying to raise your elbows up that is an impingement provocative test we don't want to be doing provocative tests clinical provocative tests on a rep by Rep basis all you're asking for guys is to develop an impingement if you already don't have one and you might argue been doing the upright row for years and years and years and it's a great shoulder exercise you never have problems just because you never have problems doesn't mean that you won't have problems even on a given particular day or one single rep it's that kind of thing guys where overuse and overload in a consistent way can lead to a breakdown eventually of those structures inside your shoulders so number three and when I firmly believe belongs in that iron graveyard number four good mornings this might be an exercise that you think was already in there and gravy on a long time ago because you don't see many people doing them anymore the reason why probably too many people have gotten hurt doing them that they've abandoned them here's the ironic thing about this exercise I actually think it's a good exercise in terms of the movement pattern that it's requiring you to do however I find that so many people lack the thoracic extension necessary to do this exercise properly as you can see as I'm demonstrating here I have a proper hip hinge which puts me in a safer position it's not a hinge straight forward at the waist that could really compromise my lower back I'm actually allowing my hips to absorb most of that energy and do this thing properly the problem is the thoracic extension is an absolute requirement here and one of the areas that we are so limited on as guys who tend to work sitting on a desk or just guys tend to do all of our work in front of us thoracic extension becomes a problem when you cannot have that proper thoracic extension all that force gets driven down above and be above and below the area that's affected mostly in this case down below through the lumbar spine and you have issues so there again a lot of different ways to strengthen our pair of spinals in our lumbar area without having to subject ourselves to an exercise that most of us are just not mechanically built to do lastly number five leg extensions or leg extinctions as I like to call them guys these belong in the iron graveyard there's so many better ways there's so many more functional ways to strengthen our quads and legs than these guys so many reasons why we have a shearing force that gets placed on our knees we have constant tension on our ACL ligament not a good idea we have an imbalance of the activation between our VMO and our rectus femoris that's a situation that leads to patellar tendon issues almost all the time and this only contributes because it favors more rectus activation than VMO it also has no co contraction from the hamstrings right at least not as much as anything that we do closed chain with our foot on the ground so for so many reasons guys these should be replaced right we don't be doing anything that that causes an obvious breakdown over time even if I say as I said if it's not causing you a problem right now why do you want to risk it when you have better options and that's the thing guys we outline the athlean-x training program so many ways to do things as I feel better than what these things are allowing us to do I wouldn't just tell you to get rid of these things and then not replace them with something that was more effective and certainly more beneficial on that risk to benefit ratio right low-risk high-reward that's what it is and that's what I bring to my program as a physical therapist and I think that's what I bring as a strength coach to you guys who watch my channel all the time we bring another level to this it's not just showing cool exercises to do it's about putting that science back in strength and I think that is the strength of our channel so guys if you haven't already and you want to start training smarter and harder because I'm certainly it's certainly gonna work the hell out of you you've got to make sure that you head over to athleanx.com right now and get our 90-day training program and see what it's like to train like an athlete okay even if you're not getting paid to be one you need to be as functionally strong and transferable as you can when it comes to taking that strength and bringing it out to whatever it is you want to do with it whether it's playing sports or just playing the game of life so head to athleanx.com right now let me know if you found this exercise helpful under this video helpful and of course let me know some of the other exercises that you've had bad experiences with and see if we can throw them in the iron graveyard as well all right thanks guys we back here again soon with another video you

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