The Bro's Guide to 5 MORE Gym Mistakes

If you read The Bro's Guide to 5 Gym Mistakes, hopefully you won't be making those mistakes anymore.  It is my goal to help you understand not only which exercises are BAD for you, but to help you learn which ones give you a better result.  Here are 5 MORE exercises that you should not be doing.  They are ineffective, a waste of time and sometimes downright injurious.  

"Hey Bro, I'm gonna rip up my Pecs".  Well, unlikely.  But you could very well being ripping up your shoulder joint, one of the most unstable joints in the body.  

The Pec Deck, also known as the Machine Fly, puts a ton of stress on the front of the shoulder while also shortening and tightening the muscles on the back of the shoulder.  The result can be shoulder impingement syndrome.
Not so great.  

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"But I get more out of this than anything - it really hits the Pecs super-hard".

Wrong again.  A peer-reviewed study out of Truman State University has shown that the Pectoralis muscles contract 23% less of the time when doing this exercise than when test subjects did flat bench presses.  So, stop wasting your time and putting your shoulder joint at risk!!!

Like the Pec Deck, the Overhead Shoulder Press Machine puts the shoulder at risk for impingement  and overuse injuries.  Why?  Well, the machine has one trajectory, and maybe that is not the trajectory at which YOUR shoulders want to move.  Are you 5'3" or 6'4"? Do you have long arms or short?  A machine that FORCES you to move the way IT moves cannot be good for your joints.  

There are a lot of better exercises to work your shoulder (Deltoid) muscles.  Why not just use Dumbbells and do the Seated Overhead Press.  It's the same motion as the machine, more or less, but it allows YOUR shoulders to move they way THEY were meant to.  This move also incorporates a lot of auxiliary muscles that you want to be targeting to get as much out of the exercise as possible.  

<----- NO


          Yes--->

The exercise above, the standing Dumbbell Shoulder Rotation, completely misses the point.  

Because the force vectors are pulling down, it puts a lot of stress on the rotator cuff without creating a force that could possibly strengthen these muscles.  

This is one of those exercises that I see a lot of people doing which REALLY makes me shake my head.  It is not only completely ineffective but the chance of damaging the small rotator cuff muscles is high.  Ugh.  

The rotator cuff muscles are often in need of strengthening to balance out your upper body workouts.  They tend to be weak on a lot of people.

The dude above has it right.  The forces are strengthening the 3 External Rotator Muscles of the shoulder.  

If you prefer to work with Dumbbells, this exercise can also be done effectively by lying on your side and rotating your shoulder upward with the elbow bent at 90 degrees.

Hey, bro, if you're doing this exercise, I feel very, very sorry for you.  It not only LOOKS ridiculous, it IS ridiculous.  I'm not making any judgments here (well, maybe just a little), but this machine is completely useless.  Save that contraption for your next appointment with the gynecologist.  

Whether you are pressing your legs out (Hip Abduction) or in (Hip Adduction), you are wasting your time. 

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There is nothing even remotely like this motion in real life.  If works primarily the stabilizers of the hip that work all day long anyway, anytime you are standing up.  It misses all of the other muscles that we actually use to move, like the Glutes, Hamstrings and Quads.  

Plus, being locked in a seated posture may cause a pulling on the spine which could result in back spasms, or worse, bulging or herniated disks.  Not good, dude.  

To work your Abductors and Adductors effectively, do these motions in standing, with a band or cable attached to your ankle.  Or even better, do lateral and cross-over lunges for a really effective workout of these muscles and the prime movers of the body and a MUCH higher metabolic effect.

"I don't know how I blew out my rotator cuff.  I really don't".  Here's a clue - look to the right. 

This exercise puts the shoulder in it's most unstable position (and as I said before, this is NOT a stable joint to begin with).  Potential for injury is very high.  

And it's just not that effective.  You will get a much better triceps workout in term of strength and growth, from doing safer moves, like the Dumbbell or Barbell Lying Triceps French Press (aka Skull Crushers) or even doing cable press downs with a rope  

I hope you have found this information helpful and that if you were doing any of these ineffective or risky exercises, this will help you to make some better choices.  I always have my eyes open at the gym and some of the dudes just insist on doing stupid things.  I'll write more about them in a future post.