Stop Making These Exercise Mistakes! (I’M BEGGING YOU)

Whether you are a stepping into a gym for the first time or you’re a seasoned vet, you are going to want to avoid the most common gym exercise mistakes. In this video, I am going to show you 17 of the most common gym exercise mistakes and what you can do to avoid them. If gains are what you’re after

What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx. com. Whether you’re walking through those doors for the first time in a long time, or maybe  it’s the very first time you’re here, you’re likely going to migrate to  a lot of the popular exercises in the gym. But I want to make sure you’re  doing them right, so I’m going to go over those and show you exactly how to get the  most out of every single one of them.

And you might find yourself starting right  here at the Leg Extension Machine. Look, I understand it’s a popular exercise. It’s  just not one of my favorites, it’s not one that I do. That being said, I realized a lot of  you are. So, what can we do?

Well, first of all, ask yourself one question for me: Are you  doing the exercise because you’re looking for an isolation quad exercise? Or are you doing it  because you’re looking for an easier leg exercise? Because if you are doing it for the latter,  I want you to get to doing better exercises like a Squat because you know they’re going to  be more rewarding for you in the long run. This, though, if you’re doing it for an isolation  exercise does beg one more follow up question, and that is: Are you best served doing isolation  quad work? Because our quads get a lot of work.

I’d rather see you put your time into doing some  additional hamstring or glute work, because I know that almost everybody watching this, they probably  got weak hams and glutes. If you’re doing this and you’re finding that causing some knee discomfort  and pain, I understand why it could be pre inflammatory if you have patella tendinitis. Guys,  if you want to do it, do it, but if you’re looking for a better exercise, I’ll show you some. So, sticking with the legs, the next place you might find yourself is on a Lying Hamstring Curl  Machine. If you’re going to do this exercise, I think you should focus on a couple of things.

Number one, stop driving your knees into the pad. Because what that does is it encourages the hip  flexors to drive the motion to help you to lift the pad up. Well, we know the hip flexors  are attached to our lumbar spine, so a lot of times people can get low back pain doing this  exercise. The way to fix that, start right here, contract your glutes, and then pull up. By  contracting the glutes, you’re going to shut off those hip flexors a little bit and allow the  hamstrings to do more of the work without having to get that overactivation on your lower back.

Another thing you could do, though, is just get off this machine because I like this Seated  Hamstring Curl variation better. We avoid all these issues of overactive hip flexors by  simply changing the machine we use. And if you don’t have access to that and at least  even try the Standing Leg Curl Machine, they’re both better than this one. But if you’re  going to do this, at least do it right. So, if International Chest Day is the most popular  day at the gym, then it stands to reason that the Dumbbell Bench Press is the most popular exercise  you probably be doing here.

But you want to make sure you’re doing it right so you’re not leaving  any games on the table. The first thing you want to do is not get confused by all the advice you  may have heard already about the exercise. Like get your shoulders down and back. That caused a  lot of us to actually try to pinch our shoulder blades backwards, which is the wrong cue. Instead, I say, un shrug your shoulders, when you do this, it’s going to take care of both  of those cues in one shot.

The second thing you’ve got to make sure you’re not forgetting to do is  utilize your leg drive just like you would on a regular barbell bench, your legs are going  to help you to move some heavier weight. So how you do that, you lay back, you get down  into the bottom position here, and then my feet here have to be able to push into the floor in  this direction. If they can push that way, I can drive these weights up. So, the same time I’m  ready to push, I drive my feet up and I push up, down, drive my feet up and push up. My feet are driving into the floor, pushing my body up the bench that way.

And again,  what that does is it helps to assist your body to move in the opposite direction, equal and  opposite force, to push those weights up and make the exercise a hell of a lot easier. I mean, who doesn’t like a good Pec Deck, except when you get it like this? Because how  you enter the machine actually matters a lot. A lot of people will reach back with both arms  and they’re putting so much unnecessary stress on their shoulder for no reason. Just rotate  towards one arm, get in, bring it all the way to the center, rotate your whole body is a  hell of a lot less stress.

The other thing is you can just adjust the starting point, you  don’t have to start so far back. Remember, this machine oftentimes trains the rear delts,  that’s why it has the capability of going back there. But to start the Chest Fly, you can start  it from a lot further towards the front. Now, when you do the exercise itself, one big  thing you don’t want to do, you don’t want to do the bear hug motion. I know Arnold talked  about how important the bear hug is on a fly, but not here.

Because what happens is as you  bear hug, you also protract your shoulders. And as soon as your shoulders get out in front  of your chest, your chest isn’t doing any of the work that it’s supposed to. So, what I want  you to think of instead is driving your body and chest back as your arms come forward. Get the  arms out all the way straight but drive the chest backwards. It’s actually two motions in one  as the arms are going this way, my chest is going back that way.

That will keep the chest  prominent, that will place more of the work on the chest and do exactly what it is you’re trying  to do with this machine in the first place. So, if you can train your triceps, you’re  likely going to try this exercise out. Except I want you to change your target point. A lot of  people will call and do these as Skull Crushers, and they target their skull and then they go up  to the top. The problem is the end position.

And when you do it with a skull as a target, what you  re doing this ending here in the wrong position every single time. Instead, shift the arms  backwards. Now go from there. And when you end, instead of bringing it all the way back over the  top, stay back there. Because when you do that, you’re going to keep the tension on the triceps  the entire time.

Straighten the elbows out, bring them down. You get a bigger stretch on  the long had the triceps anyway. And because that end position doesn’t finish straight  up overhead, you re going to get a lot more tension on the triceps, on the whole exercise. Next exercise up is the Side Lateral Raise. This is obviously an exercise that almost everybody  performs to hit that middle delt.

But there’s so much that can be done wrong here, the first  of which is pouring the pitchers. You guys might have heard this advice before that at the top,  you want to have your pinky higher than your thumb as if you’re pouring a pitcher of water. But not when it comes to the health of your shoulder. When we’re up in this position here guys  are getting internal rotation with elevation. When I know that I can get the same results or better  by not doing that, why would I bother?

So instead, what I do is just lean my torso a little bit more  forward, I keep the thumb higher than the pinky to alleviate any of those concerns. And I still  hit that middle belt really, really hard directly against that downward force of gravity. Now, what I don’t want to see is a lot of m