4 “Must Do” Exercises You’re Doing WRONG (Less Gains, More Injury)

When it comes to building muscle and avoiding injury, you must choose the right exercises to include in your routine. But even the best exercises when done improperly due to training mistakes can quickly start to do more harm than good. And that's why in this video, I'll go through the 4 great exercises (RKC plank, seated row, leg curls, and lateral raises) that you should consider including in your routine and how you can avoid making the common exercise mistakes related to them. Here are the exercises you’re doing wrong.

First, the traditional plank. It doesn’t activate the core very well. And when held this way, many will end up sagging their lower back and feeling the movement in their shoulders and other areas because they don’t know how to plank properly. A much better version is something called the RKC plank. First, you'll want to move your elbows forward such that they're at the level of your eyes. Then, come up to the plank position and then initiate something called posterior pelvic tilt by forcefully squeezing your glutes and abs, which will, in turn, tilt your pelvis upwards, resulting in greater core contraction.

Lateral raises should also be a staple in your routine for optimal shoulder development. But in terms of how to do lateral raises, there are 3 training mistakes related to this exercise. First mistake: raising the weight too high. Not only does this invite your upper traps to start taking over, but it also creates excessive stress on the shoulder joint. Second mistake: the internal rotation of the shoulder. Mistake 1 and mistake 2 essentially create the worst possible conditions for your shoulder joint to be in. And third mistake is that of raising the weight directly out to the sides, as this creates more stress on the AC joint and the shoulder. Instead, here’s what you’ll want to do. First, fix your arm angle by moving your arm forward slightly into the scapular plane and incorporating a slight bend in the elbow. Next, lean forward slightly and point the thumbs towards the ceiling very slightly. And then when you raise the weight, raise to shoulder height only.

Leg curls are a great exercise to include in your routine for balanced hamstring development if you know how to do leg curls properly. However, there are a couple of common exercise mistakes related to it. First, the involvement of the calf muscle. But this muscle can’t be active during both knee flexion and plantarflexion. So to shift more of the tension onto your hamstrings, point your toes away from you as you perform your leg curls. Second, is how your body compensates when you start to fatigue with this exercise – by bringing the butt up and arching the lower back to shorten the range of motion. To mitigate this, you can lighten the weight. But a better option would be to incorporate exercises like the glute-ham raise or swiss ball leg curl.

Another one of the exercises you’re doing wrong is the seated row (or barbell row or any row for that matter). But many people make the mistake of letting the shoulder roll forward at the end position. Not only does this put the shoulder in a compromised position, but it also prevents the back muscles from fully contracting. So instead, you need to focus on keeping your back muscles involved even at the end range of the movement. Which you can do most effectively by squeezing your shoulder blades together as you pull the weight towards you by contracting your lats and those mid-back muscles.

All in all I hope you were able to see that if you want to build muscle most effectively without getting injured in the process, then it’s a matter of both choosing the right exercises to include in your routine and then making sure that you take the time to learn how to execute them properly.

And for a step-by-step program that puts this all together for you by not only showing you what exercises to perform every week but also how to properly execute them in order to build muscle in the most effective and safest way possible, then take the analysis quiz below to discover what science-based program is best for you and your specific situation: https://builtwithscience.com

Link to written article:
https://builtwithscience.com/common-exercise-mistakes/

Filmed by: Bruno Martin Del Campo

MUSIC:
Music by Ryan Little - fall so high. - https://thmatc.co/?l=F77E5E72

STUDIES:

RKC PLANK
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14763141.2014.942355#.U-Op_IBdVy-

LATERAL RAISES ACTIVATION
https://www.bisp-surf.de/Record/PU201312008451

LATERAL RAISES IMPINGEMENT
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f962/896c767355405a14a06cde7ab7b012c76edd.pdf

LATERAL RAISES FORM
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19194023
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10736394

LEG CURLS
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24345718

SEATED ROW
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC449729/

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