3 Common Exercises You Shouldn’t Be Doing

Doing exercise and working out are among the best things you can do to your body, but you still have to be careful when doing this. This is because a number of exercises that people commonly include in their workouts can actually be harmful to your body. Here are three of them.

1. Crunches

(source: http://chronicbackpain-relief.com/)

You see these almost everywhere where people are working out and I don’t really get it. Not only are these shown not to help out abs as much as most people think, they also place a bunch of pressure on the spine and back. And the fact that people do them extremely fast and aggressive for long periods of time is also killing your back. Forget the crunches and do either resistance ab exercises or stability ones like a plank.

2. Bench Dips

(source: bachperformance.com)

This exercise is one that is almost always harmful to the person doing it, but you still see fairly often. This one is done where your arms are by your side with palms forward, usually on a bench or other surface that is located behind you. This is harmful because this means that all of our shoulder rotations while in this position are internal which can not only be uncomfortable but can skyrocket the risk of various shoulder injuries and can lead to major increases in shoulder pain. If you want to work triceps, doing tricep dips on parallel bars is a much better way to go.

3. Kipping Pullup

(source: lotusbootycamp.com)

Now this isn’t going to make you cross fitters very happy, but this exercise really doesn’t have a place in anyone’s solid workout program. There is no other way to put it than that this exercise can easily lead to injury. This is because the whipping your body does on the bar during this exercise can put heavy stress on your tendons and muscles which can obviously lead to injury. Instead of these, going with regular, dead hang pull ups is a much better option.