5 Effective Exercises gone overboard.
Don't let the misguided ruin these exercises for you. While some exercises catch reputations as back destroyers, shoulder killers, or elbow torture, they may not be the movement to blame. The blame may lie in the mover, who makes the same fatal mistake as many killer television shows do, they make spin-offs. These versions of originally effective and safe exercises often appeal to thrill seekers, but the thrills may kill. Check out these movements, and see if you fall victim to the "more pain, more gain," propoganda.
The Overhead Swing: The swing for people who won't admit that they can't snatch.
1. Overhead Kettlebell swings.
These usually defeat the purpose of kettlebell swings. The whole idea of a swing is to generate force through hip extension. In a perfect world, you can extend the hips so forcefully that the bell effortlessly swings overhead. In reality, this usually isn’t the case, leading to crappy, pain causing swings. What will happen, is the swings will get heavier and heavier, and the movement will devolve into a cheated overhead raise. If your mentality of doing kettlebell swings is to work your traps, sit down in a dark room and read this carefully. You Swing a kettlebell with your hips, not your shoulders, and not your back!
The overhead swing poorly combines an overhead raise with a kettlebell swing (hinge pattern). Instead of bastardizing two demanding exercises for one muscle group, separate them, and get even stronger swings. One of the biggest problems with the overhead swing is that people may not have a good swing in the first place. Don’t add more complexity to worsen the movement quality, move stronger with the original lift. If you have bands or extra heavy kettlebells, you can make any swing set heavy. No joke, kettlebell 5 rep sets can light up your hamstrings, and grow them too. Most corporate gyms have kettlebells that go up to 35 pounds, tops. If you're serious about building a better butt, stronger legs, and total body conditioning, you may want to invest in heavier kettlebells that will challenge you for sets of 5-10 reps. Train a few days in your living room, or your back yard. Swing it to shoulder level, tops. When this gets too easy, get a heavier bell. (Start setting aside pieces of your paycheck now.)
2. Stiff-leg deadlifts.
This isn’t a good way to “isolate” the hamstrings. While yes, it will require the movement to use only contraction in the hamstrings, it doesn’t create a movement pattern that helps with athleticism, and builds strength. Every good hinge uses the hips and hamstrings. You don’t do straight leg kettlebell swings or stiff leg deadlifts(SLDL), because it makes them so much harder. It’s harder because you wouldn’t be using your bodily levers properly! Instead of keeping the legs straight to put more emphasis on the hamstrings, try a conventional deadlift from a slight elevation. As you get more mobile and more comfortable, maybe the box can go higher. Until then, hit the hinge heavier, or lift the surface higher. That’ll set those hamstrings on fire. Any one of the lifts in the video above can be a replacement for the stiff-legged deadlift. They'll build better lower back strength and stability too, instead of the potential strain from a SLDL.
3. Hypermobile pec flys.
Ligaments aren’t looking for hypertrophy, so stop turning heavy pec flys into a weighted contortionist act. It’s not making anything stronger, and is just increasing the risk for a serious shoulder injury. The NSCA has a pretty good rule of thumb for shoulder movents like the fly, lateral raise, and front raise: Stop at shoulder level. Keep the range of motion reasonable, and get stronger, safer. If the new, smaller range of motion feels too easy, you always have that age old option of ADDING MORE WEIGHT! Whether it's on a pec deck, cable, or with dumbbells, stop jeopardizing your shoulder, and keep that range of motion conservative. Your connective tissues will thank you, and you can try even better moves for building those pecs, like a single armed pushup or single armed dumbbell press. There are always other options, don't stretch yourself too thin on the same exercise.
Burpee sequence, step by step. Maintain these 5 points properly and explosively.
4. Burpee-Marathons.
Do you know that feeling of doing many burpees, where for the first few reps you can leap triumphantly off the floor, turning to the point of barely being able to stand up off the ground? Where the burpees should have stopped was after they started to lose speed and height. The burpee is a high intensity plyometric exercise, and the purpose of plyos are to produce maximum distance in minimum time. As the burpee starts to move in slow motion, and the quality of the jump diminishes, the burpee has lost it's point. Doing burpees can add to the effectiveness of the training program, and help produce full body power, but they have to be done right, and NOT done for cardio. The only exception to this would be for people training for tactical strength challenges and recruitment. Burpees are often assessed, and the required performance is typically a max amount of burpees in a one to two minute burst. If you have to prepare for that....
1. We're sorry.
2. You're going to have to prepare for it.
We don't make the rules, just the recommendations.
This is a kipping pull-up. Notice the different angle taken to get the collarbone to the bar. This is the initial movement into pulling the body up to the "front rack" of the muscle-up. Pulling the body over the bar, before pressing from a dip position.
5. Kipping Pull-up.
This one was tricky to throw on the list. There is a lot of debate about whether or not kipping should be acceptable in strength and conditioning at all, due to it's risks to the shoulders and neck. One thing is for certain: swinging your collarbone at a bar repetitively by thrusting your hips isn't going to end well over time. It's the overtraining equivalent of doing power cleans for endurance repetitions. Instead of using the pull-up, the kip doesn't necessarily need to be removed from the workout. It just needs to be done properly, for low amounts of rep. A muscle-up is basically the bodyweight version of the clean and jerk, it happens in reverse. Instead of moving from deadlift position to having the barbell overhead, you'd be pulling from a barbell overhead to end up pressed into a deadlift position. Both of these are power exercises, and are most effectively done for low reps. The point isn't to kip repeatedly, the point is to generate torque effectively, and lever the body above the bar. If unable to add weight, or uncomfortable with additional weight, add additional speed, and pull the body through faster! What applies for burpees applies for kips, and muscle ups too. It's a plyometric bodyweight exercise, so treat it more like one!
What to gather from all of this.
1.Let power exercises be power exercises.
Like the olympic lifts, don't let burpees and kips become cardio. These exercises were meant to showcase power, and if you get to the point of dragging your feet through them, you've done too many reps. Don't add more burpees, strive for faster, higher burpees. A gymnast doesn't train kips until exhaustion, a gymnast builds and efficient, powerful kip to lead up to a more powerful, impressive movement. Let your workout involve some version of that. The movements are more impressive, for lower reps. Do them right.
2.Stick to the fundamentals, and go heavier.
Walk before you run. Is your traditional kettlebell swing flawless? If it's not, why try to rush the train wreck of swinging the bell overhead? The same goes for the stiff leg deadlift. It's so hard to maintain proper technique with it in the first place, so how does your conventional deadlift look? Before enhancing the demands of the movement, make sure the fundamental movement is flawless. They are called progressions, because one skill needs to be mastered already in order to do the harder skill. Usually, you don't see people power cleaning before they know how to deadlift. Know where your movement quality stands, and get more proficient before going more progressive.
3. More range of motion is not always a good thing.
Wider flies, higher swings, both look impressive, but the only thing impressive about them is how closely they flirt with danger. Stretching under heavy load isn't a faster way to take a yoga class, it's a faster way to ending your training routine with injuries. Some people are hyper mobile, but for most, this isn't worth the risk. The overhead swings, SLDLs, and kipping for the sake of kipping all may leave you with faulty movement, mysterious aches and pains, and potential injuries. Training heavy isn't dangerous, training heavy with risky technique is.Stick to the fundamental movement. If it has become too easy, either add weight, or add speed! Now go and crush your journey to being a force production machine!
David Corrado BS, CSCS, TSAC-F
Founder of Trainathlon
David Corrado began his training career at age 18, volunteering as a fitness coach for students with intellectual disabilities in the Gainesville, Florida area. While at University of Florida, David became certified, and worked as a trainer and coach at the UF campus rec center. Having been certified through multiple curriculums including PTAG and the NSCA’s CSCS and TSAC-F certifications, David now trains in Boca Raton, Florida, specializing in functional strength training for working adults. He trains his clients at the Institute of Human Performance, in Boca Raton, Fl.