Everybody talks about Big Workout Fails but those videos only show things that affect
one person at one time.
What if my workout fails were affecting thousands every day?
I can't wait to explain it all to you today.
We've all seen the videos, the guy that falls off the back of the treadmill because he's
looking at the girl running next to him.
Or the person that tries to do the bench press with uneven weights or doesn't have the collars
on the side and he gets that effect going on.
Those are certainly fails, those are big embarrassing moments.
But those may not be true fails.
Because as I said in the open, they're only affecting one guy at one time.
I think the biggest fails being made today are the things that we're doing each and every
day.
You can walk into any gym and you'll see all 10 of these these things being done.
So what I wanted to do today was show you what I think the 10 biggest things are that
are holding you back from getting results in the gym.
We'll call them fails.
And most importantly I want to show you how to fix them.
So lets go through these rapid fire.
We're going to cover every major muscle group.
Up first on our 10 biggest workout fails, our Chin Up Reach.
Check out me here doing this Chin Up and see if you didn't spot this already a 100 times
today in your local gym.
As you can see, the effect here is, reaching for the bar with your chin only makes you
feel as if you're getting your body higher.
But you're certainly not doing any more work in your lats to actually get yourself there.
If you think you're doing reps here guys, Don't Count Them!
Getting your chin to the bar is NOT a pull up.
Getting your sternum to the bar is a pull up.
So as you see as I corrected it here, stop focusing on your head and your chin as a target,
but think instead about getting your sternum up to that bar and you're going to realize
that you're covering a lot more distance and therefore making the lats work that much harder.
Number two is the Traps Trap Shoulder Raise.
Now if you're one of those guys that says.
every time I work out my shoulders I never feel it the next day in my delts,
there's no soreness.
But I do get soreness in my Traps.
This might be one of the big reasons why.
As you can see, when I'm doing this Side Lateral Raise I have a lot of substitution going on.
As a matter of fact, it's the number one substitution pattern being made.
Guys will shift the load from the Delts to the Traps.
And they do this to help the weight up.
In order to fix this though guys, the biggest thing to do is to try to take those Traps
out of it.
The way I like to do it is feel as if I'm reaching or leaning in the direction that
the dumbbell is being raised in.
If I lean to the opposite side, against the grain, to the left if I'm raising with the
right arm, that makes it much easier for me to pull that right shoulder up,
pull that Trap up and make this thing target completely the wrong area.
So if you want to avoid the Traps Trap, you've got to start leaning in the right direction.
Next up what I call our Tricep Extinctions.
You want to keep those Triceps small guys?
Then do the exercise the way I'm showing you right here.
The big problem here, again something you'll see each and every day is that the angle of
the arm is too vertical.
There's no stretch on the Triceps, number one to get a more powerful contraction, and
number two there's no tension on the Triceps at the end of the movement.
So if you want to fix it, all it takes is a slight adjustment of your arm positioning.
Get those upper arms, I'm not talking about anything from your forearm down,
I'm talking about upper arm, the bicep area, get them angled backwards, at least 45 degrees.
As you'll see where I reach the end of this exercise rep, I've got peak contraction on
the Triceps.
Ok, I've still got tension there..
That is what's going to build the Triceps, not taking half of the rep off.
by having no tension at all at the top of the rep as I showed you at the beginning.
Walk by the guys at your gym doing the Bench Press and the only place you'll see a bigger
arch might be at the McDonalds across the street.
I like to call that, when guys are really arching during their Bench Press.
the Bullsh Press.
Because that's all that it is BS.
One of the biggest pet peeves I have guys, is when people do the Bench Press like I'm
showing you here,
they think that it makes them push a lot more weight and they're proud of that and they
can go around and brag about how much they bench.
The problem is guys, all they're doing is artificially creating, first of all tremendous
stress on the lower spine.
And secondly, artificially creating a shorter distance that the bar has to travel to touch
their chest.
So instead of trying to make the bar travel a lower or lesser distance, why don't you
try doing the exercise the right way.
And that is guys as I show you here.
forget about lowering the bar all the way to your chest.
I've already talked about, as a physical therapist the risk isn't worth to go these extra couple
of inches,
for whatever you think that extra stretch is, are not beneficial enough to make it worth
your while.
So I say take it down to 90 degrees, be fully in control of the rep on the way down and
on the way back up power that bar back up to the top.
You will get great results.
You won't have to arch and your back will love you for it.
Number five, the Seesaw Curl.
Now you guys have commented on my bicep development and I can tell you that the Barbell Curl has
been one of the staples of my workouts.
That being said, there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it.
You know that I say, that on this exercise in particular, getting a little bit of momentum
to allow you to use a little bit heavier weight
and concentrate on a slow eccentric, is one of the best ways to get your Biceps to respond.
But it's how far you take that cheat that makes all the difference.
As you can see here in these reps, I'm taking that cheat too far,
and I can tell you what's too far is when your upper back goes past vertical.
Right, you can see on each one of these reps, as I get it to the top,
I keep the cheat going well past vertical.
That we don't want to do.
Again, we want to be able to move heavier weights and have a slower eccentric on the
way down.
But we don't want to put our lower back in jeopardy by doing that.
So if you have to, you can do what I show you here.
Which is a wall curl.
Utilizing the wall behind me I'm able to limit that back extension to remain at vertical
and still get that slight cheat in the beginning of the rep to generate the momentum and to
use those heavier weights necessary.
So the next time you want to look like a Seesaw, don't.
Use my alternative that I just showed you.
Let's move on to the abs.
And this is one that you see every single time you go near people in the gym that are
doing any hanging ab raise variation.
It gets even worse if they're using the Roman Chair.
As I show you here, this is a Hanging Leg Raise.
Ok, I am raising my legs.
I'm not doing all that much work for my abs but I'm doing a great job raising my legs.
Guys, if you want to get your abs to work you have to do what their function is.
And one of them is to flex the spine.
So if you want to actually get this exercise to work for you or any variation of a hanging
exercise, you've got to make sure that you're using your pelvis and not your legs.
Simply raising your legs doesn't do anything to flex your spine.
So as I show you this alternative here, look at the difference.
If you stop focusing on moving your legs up and down and start focusing on getting that
pelvis, or your butt, or your tailbone, whatever that focal point is going to be for you,
to actually raise up, you know gain some elevation from the start of the rep to the top of the
rep and actually move up and under,
then you're going to start working your abs.
And then you'll start to see the results that you thought you were working that hard for
all along.
Sticking with the abs and next one that absolutely drives me crazy, Cervical Crunches.
See if you can recognize this guy from your gym?
Alright, this is usually the guy that does the road to nowhere treadmill and then the
spot reducing crunch workout.
Alright he's the guy, that's all he does.
He's usually the overweight guy, really sweaty, and these are the types of crunches that he
does.
The problem here once again, is he thinks that he's working his abs because he's getting
himself further, at least his eyeballs are getting closer to his thighs.
But that doesn't mean that his abs are doing any of the work to get that to happen.
Instead, if you want to focus on getting your abs to work guys, you've got to stop pulling
on your neck.
All your asking for there is a disk issue.
As I show you here, you want to actually keep your fingers as if they're not even in contact
with your head.
They're just there for contact, just for a resting pad.
Ok, but they're not going to be pulling or initiating any of the force.
All of your work should be done by your abs and they should be focusing instead of your
shoulder blades lifting up.
Lifting up and curling, in other words clearing the entire shoulder blade off of the ground
or mat that you're on.
Again has nothing to do with what happens between here and here and everything to do
with what happens in your thoracic spine and how much of it curls up and off the mat.
Next up number eight and another one that eats away at me as a physical therapist.
Something I call RIP DL's, right my play on words for the Romanian Deadlift Done Wrong.
As you can see guys, when I show you this version of the Romanian Deadlift, you tell
me if it looks like you?
If it does, you tell me when you're going to make your appointment to have your back
looked at, after you ruin it.
Because guys, the problem here is, when you put that kind of weight out in front of you,
if you don't have either good hamstring flexibility or a good hip hinge mechanics, that weight
stays too far out in front.
I don't care how strong your low back is, or how good a job you do at maintaining that
arch in your low back,
it's simply going to become too much of a load for your back to handle eventually,and
it's going to get out.
Right you're going to be asking for a disk issue.
So what you really want to do instead is, watch what I'm going here and focus on that
first movement.
It's a backward hinge of the hips.
The back still stays arched, it still stays tight and fixed.
But the hinge happens at the hip.
So your butt should actually be traveling backwards as the bar is traveling down.
Not having your butt stay in one place and let the bar travel down.
Alright so it's a big big discrepancy even though it doesn't look like that big of a
movement for you.
Concentrate on where your butts going.
Make it go back and I'm telling you your back will be a lot more thankful for how you're
taking care of it.
Number nine, the redheaded stepchild of Delt training, the Front Delts.
Right, all these people will say guys, You don't have to work on the front delts at all.
If you concentrate on the sides and the rear you're good to go.
The Front Delts get all the work in your other exercises.
Sure they do get a lot of work from your other exercises but they still need to be trained
directly guys as well.
The problem is we get the Front Delt Diss because are they not often ignored that way.
But even when they are, people cheat to try to move a lot of weight here.
Watch as I show you this version and we've covered this in previous videos.
This here guys is another attempt
to make you feel as if you're moving the weight further when all you're doing is using a substitution
pattern.
You're using your lumbar spine to Fake the weights up another three or four inches until
they're parallel to the ground.
But your Delts stop doing the work at around that 60 to 70 degree mark.
So if you really want your Front Delts to pop
and get them to respond the way you were trying to by doing these exercises, then lower the
weight a little bit if you have to and do what I'm showing you here.
Make the Delts do the work from your thighs all the way up to that point where you're
parallel to the ground.
And then slowly lower the weights down there the same way, in control, ok.
The muscles only work, or they only grow when they work.
And they work both up and down.
But you've got to stop using those substitution patterns.
And in this case you've got to stop doing that Front Delt Diss.
Finally number ten here, what I call Hipless Squats.
Guys this is a tough one because if you don't have the adequate strength.in your quads
or if you don't have a training partner or if you don't have access to a mirror when
you're doing your squats, you might never even know that you're doing this.
It's again, one of those sensation things.
Watch when I'm doing this version of the squat here.
Again, theres lots of varying degrees of badness when you're talking about this big mistake.
The problem guys is that there is unequal distribution between hip hinge and knee hinge
in going down into the squat.
And if your quads aren't strong enough, I can guarantee you, you're body is so damn
smart, it knows to not allow that knee to break to a point where the quads have to take
all that effort.
So instead we have what we call hanging on our ligaments,right.
We're talking about patella tendon, we're talking about hip ligaments.
They're doing all the work in shielding you from the fact that your quads aren't strong
enough.
And they're taking on the brunt of all of your weight.
That's not a good thing.
So what you want to do instead is you want to make sure that you're at least leading
with your hips in a backwards movement, ok.
One of the easiest ways to do this, people say, is to act as if you're sitting on something.
So why don't you take a bench,
instead of putting it between your legs because that can actually cause you to have some,
you know, movement and mechanics that are unnatural to you, especially if you're just
starting out.
Put it behind your butt just far enough back so that when you go down, you want to reach
for it with your butt and just make contact.
Don't sit down there but just make contact and come back up out of it.
See, as I show you again, it's equal contribution so that the bottom, those thighs are parallel
to the ground.
Yes they are taking all the work but that's what we want in the first place, right.
And also, I can tell you when we get that extra hip hinge you're going to activate the
glutes more as well.
More of a stretch on the glutes in the bottom position.
A stronger more powerful squat coming up and out of it.
So this hipless squat is going to leave you with bad knees, kneeless legs.
So make sure you fix it early on in your training or if not, fix it now regardless of how far
you are in your training.
So there you have it, The Top 10 Biggest Workout Fails.
And yes, I said biggest because these are the kind of fails that are affecting everybody
across the world in gyms each and every day.
Not just the guy falling off the back of the treadmill, he's the only one that has to deal
with that embarrassment.
But these are the types of things guys, that hold you back from the results that I think
you should be getting.
And because of that, I always say, You've got to start training like an athlete guys.
You've got to start caring about each and every move that you do if you want to start
seeing those next level results.
And I want to help you get there.
I always say guys, head on over to ATHLEANX.COM and grab my 90 day training program because
it is the program that I use.
And it is where I get an opportunity to coach you through and make sure you're not making
these types of fails and these types of mistakes that I know will hold you back.
So if you haven't already guys, then head over there and join Team Athlean.
Grab the 90 day training program and start seeing what it's like to train like an athlete.
To start getting fail free consistent results.
If you guys found this video helpful, make sure you leave your comments below.
In the meantime, I know you probably nodded your head at least 7 or 8 times, hopefully
it's because you've seen other people doing it and not because you've been doing them.
But look we all make mistakes.
And the most important thing is that we learn from them.
Alright guys, leave your comments below and I'll be back here in just a few days with
another video.