Learn some of the most common exercise “no no’s” to help you prevent injuries and pain, avoid impractical training adaptations, and maximize your results from only using the exercises that are best-suited for your training goals.
Few things irk me more than seeing a professional fitness trainer having one of their clients performing an exercise that is dangerous for that person – or any person, for that matter. In most cases, that exercise is not only dangerous, but also unnecessary, if not completely unsuitable for their training goals. Oftentimes, they would be much better served by another, more appropriate and safer alternative. It’s completely irresponsible, and I would guess usually a result of ignorance. But no matter what the reason, there are some exercises, that in my opinion, you should never do. Well, at least, almost never because there always seem to be exceptions to the rule. Don’t get me wrong because I’m not saying I am perfect or that I’ve always been perfect as a professional, but there’s a place where I draw a line, and I’m sticking by my guns.
 Now, before you get your panties in a bunch, let me just say that there is no such thing as a bad exercise – only the misapplication of an exercise. So, repeat after me. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A BAD EXERCISE. The truth is that the effectiveness of an exercise for an intended purpose runs on a spectrum. Some exercises are very effective (and efficient) at helping you achieve certain goals, and some exercises are very ineffective (and inefficient) for helping you achieve certain goals. The lesson is that it always depends on your individual training goals – always.
On top of that, each exercise has a risk to benefit ratio that also runs on a spectrum. For example, some exercises, while they may be very efficient/effective for achieving a certain goal may have a very high risk of injury associated with them. Kipping pullups and snatches come to mind. They’re both great exercises for the right purpose, but there is a very high risk of injury compared to many other exercises. It just comes with the territory.
So, for each intended training goal or purpose, every single exercise is either optimal (ie efficiently effective), sub-optimal, or somewhere in-between. Also, for each intended purpose, exercises are either high risk, low risk, or somewhere in-between. So, the terms “good” and “bad” aren’t nearly descriptive enough to really define an exercise’s usefulness/practicality/safety/etc. It’s just too vague.
Fortunately, there are a lot of good fitness coaches out there who understand and teach this. And also good for you and I is that we both have marvelous physiology coupled with an incredible intuition that will tell us everything we need to know when we exercise. So, next time you’re exercising, pay attention to that thing you have between your ears!
Continue reading The Top 10 Exercises You Should NEVER Do
Scott Sonnon – Joint Mobility Mastery-Level Teacher
There is one thing, and one thing only, that I can point to with 100% confidence and say that everyone – yes, everyone – would benefit from including in their physical practice – whether as part of an exercise program or not. That one thing is [...]
There’s nothing worse than loosey goosey shoulders during the pullup and chinup exercise. Trust me, as a personal trainer, it’s not a pretty sight to behold from across the gym floor. Even from several yards away, I can feel the shearing forces on the soft tissues around the shoulders – sending shivers up my [...]
QUESTION:
Hey John, I’ve never contacted you before but your website has been instrumental in shifting my training focus from Dragon Door and Kettlebells towards Circular Strength Training with a long-term view to MovNat or Parkour-style movement skills.
Grandiose plans to be sure! A journey with a thousand steps and all that, I decided to concentrate on Intuflow and for the last 3 weeks have been doing the beginner level daily. My problem is that I’ve started picking up some injuries even from that! Lower back and shoulder. Some parts of me, like my wrists and knees, feel great from the practice. Is it normal for some folks to pick up niggles even from simple mobility drills?
It seems that no matter what I do lately it, aggravates some part of me. I shall be going through the video again but I’d appreciate your thoughts given that I know you went through a steep learning curve with mobility stuff yourself.
Thanks, Colin
ANSWER:
First off, I can definitely relate. I’ve been there, and I’ve been frustrated just like you. You’re only in three weeks (which is great!), and that’s enough time to learn quite a bit about your mobility. You’re facing resistance to the changes you’ve made in your training program, and you’re asking for help, which means that you’re committed to seeing this through to success. Keep it up, Colin!
Now, that is a GREAT question because you bring up a very important point concerning the nature of Intu-Flow joint mobility training (or any prehabilitative training, for that matter). Nobody starts a new training program with a blank slate. We all carry a lifetime of tensions, hidden or known pains, weaknesses, stored deficits, and general limitations throughout our bodies. These are issues that are present in the body before you even started your Intu-Flow training, and for most people, this is exactly why they start an Intu-Flow practice in the first place. Prehabilitative training is, in part, a process of cleaning the slate to remove these impediments. In doing so, you directly confront your restrictions on a daily basis, seeking to slowly unwind them through gradual tension release and the recovery of basic ranges of motion.
Continue reading Q+A: Can You Get Injured From Gentle Exercise?
By the time you’re finished with this tutorial, you’ll be a creepy squatter, errr… a squatting creep… actually you’ll move just like a duck. Well, no matter how you say it – it doesn’t sound good, but this is a really great movement exercise. Honest!
Take a look at the Squat Creep (aka “Duck [...]
Hi my name is John Sifferman, and I’m suffering from a severe case of EPDOMS. They say admitting you need help is the first step to recovery. So, now I’m here for the 12-step program.
What is EPDOMS you ask? EPDOMS stands for Extremely Painful Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness. This is like regular DOMS taken to an extreme. So, how does one provoke a bad case of EPDOMS?
Well, you see, not too long ago, I subjected myself to an act of lunacy. I decided to film a video for an article demonstrating a maximum repetition set of bodyweight squats. You’re probably asking yourself, “what’s the big deal? That’s easy, right?” Theoretically, that would be the case, but I have a knack for surprising even myself sometimes. In this particular case, I wasn’t quite aware of my capacity in this exercise, nor was I expecting to score nearly as many repetitions as I performed. I was expecting (and hoping) to top out around 80 or 100 reps, deal with some marginal soreness for a day or two, and live happily ever after. After all, I haven’t trained high rep bodyweight squats in years – fatiguing around 40-50 reps, and maxing out around twice that much sounded about right. Needless to say, that’s not exactly what happened.
When all was said and done, I had been doing squats for 12 minutes, and I have no idea how many reps I did (lost count around 82, or was it 83…). Now, I’ve heard of guys doing sets of 500 and even 1000 squats, so I didn’t set a world record by any stretch, but it was truly a maximal set and I did experience muscle failure (which was the goal).
The point I was trying to make from that video is that most fitness trainees don’t even come close to a high level of intensity in their training. Most trainees could be working much harder than they have been, and still not even come close to maximal exertion. Unfortunately for me, it took hundreds of repetitions to demonstrate a set to muscle failure, and I dealt with the resulting DOMS accordingly. It took 7 days before I was truly able to function again, and two weeks before I was back to my normal self. Yikes!
This event sparked a reminder for why I purposely do NOT seek DOMS or use muscle soreness as an indicator of progress. If nothing else, I want my training to help me reach my goals as quickly and safely as possible AND not make me sore (or otherwise weaken me) in the process.
Continue reading DOMS And Why Health-First Fitness Matters
David Beckham, the world renowned soccer player, has just recently been forced to take the bench because of a fully ruptured Achilles tendon (news article here). Having a ruptured tendon is bad enough, but this happened right before Beckham was about to go play in his last World Cup, a suitable finish to his [...]
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