How To Avoid Injuring Yourself Working Out

There are a number of exercises that people perform regularly which can have little or no benefit, and also be a potential risk for injury. The likely suspects are sit ups and dead lifts when not done incorrectly. In fact, here, sit ups are suggested to be a complete waste of time. Jon and I recommend a version of sit ups as an auxiliary exercise in the Mojo Blueprint (auxiliary as they are not a compound exercise that span your largest muscle groups. Compound movements are best for maximum testosterone boosting and fat burning effects). We strongly advise to not come past about 30 degrees off the ground so you keep the curvature in the spine. We also suggest an abdominal ball which keeps the curve in the spine, and again, advise to not come up all the way as you want to keep that curvature all the time. Overall I prefer the plank and a variety of the plank hold – it’s also a compound exercise and superb for engaging and strengthening the core. Here are a few examples of exercises that can cause injury from i09.com:

Sit-ups and Crunches

A waste of time? (U.S. Army/Flickr/CC)

Exercise physiologist Heather Milton says sit-ups and crunches are “not needed — ever.” Not only are they terribly ineffective, they tend to overuse areas already prone to abuse, such as the spinal column and lower back. What’s more, sit ups produce the same force in the spine that can create disc bulges and herniation.

“Think about what you’re doing when performing a sit-up,” says Milton. “You’re going from a neutral spine position where you’re lying on the ground and you’re creating a flexion [a bending] movement in your spine each time you’re coming up.”

Milton says that movements of flexion and extension are a normal part of exercise, but we should not be repetitively reproducing movements strictly in flexion. Many of us are
already in a near-perpetual state of flexion in our daily lives, due to the hunched positions that we assume while working on computers.

Sit-ups, in particular, put undue pressure on the anterior portion of the spine, which pulls on the lumbar vertebrae. What’s more, your basic situp only engages the rectus abdominis muscle— just one abdominal group in the entire group of core muscles.

“The rectus abdominis is supposed to control against extensive extension of your spine, so it shouldn’t be shortened as you contract with a sit-up, says Milton. “It should be able to maintain a good length all the time.”

Instead of sit-ups and crunches, Milton recommends the plank. The key to the movement is to keep the core engaged with the back and legs in a straight alignment. Arms can either be fully outstretched or bent at the elbows.

Weighted Squats

The weighted squat is another excellent full-body exercise. But many people use a Smith Machine to do it, a device that can limit the range of motion necessary to perform the exercise.

“This disassociates the movement of the squat,” says Milton. “Whenever I see somebody in a Smith Machine trying to do squats, they’re doing their squats in a very abnormal way — in such a way that it ceases to become a functional movement. And the squat is a very functional movement.”

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Avoid the Smith Machine. (LiveStrong/YouTube)

The problem is that the machine constrains the movement movement of the bar to a vertical plane. On one hand, this serves to stabilize the bar, but Milton says it’s very difficult for most people to get into a proper squat position when they’re locked into a set range of motion. Frustratingly, the Smith Machine is also used to help people prepare for doing freely done weighted back squats — but it’s more hindrance than assistance.

Josh Henkin, a conditioning specialist from Scottsdale, Arizona agrees that the Smith Machine is problematic, and advises against it. The fix, he says, it to just do the free weight equivalent.

Read full article on i09.com