The Seven Deadly Exercises

In the past, I’ve shared my top exercises for rapid fat loss and muscle gain, featuring a host of multi-joint, compound movements for your upper body (push up’s, pull up’s, etc.), lower body (squats, deadlifts, lunges, etc.), and core (planks and anti-rotational exercises). These “multiple muscle” exercises provide the biggest bang for your buck during your workouts to generate maximum results in minimal time.

However, I think I’m going to switch it up a bit today and focus on the WORST exercises you can add to your training routine. The following list features movements that I wouldn’t be caught dead doing. These movements deliver shoddy results and flat our hurt people- movements that have far greater risk than reward:

The 7 Worst Exercises of All Time

1.) Abs Machine

Crunches and sit-ups only promote excessive flexion of the lumbar spine and tend to cause neck and back pain. "The traditional sit-up imposes approximately 3300 N or about 730 pounds of compression on the spine" (McGill, 88). And that’s with body weight only, each repetition. What’s worse than crunches or sit-ups? Doing a similar movement with added weight in a machine that only trains your body in an unnatural front to back motion in a seated position!

Yes, abs machines, like crunches and sit-ups, do make your feel your abdominal muscles. However, there are far better ways to accomplish this without the high risk of this machine. It’s all about risk/reward.

Remember, the true function of your core is stabilization, both static and dynamic. You should be able to maintain a neutral, straight-line position from your hips to your shoulders in all 3 planes of movement (front to back, side to side, and rotational) no matter what the external stimulus may be.

21 Century Training Upgrade: For rock hard, athletic abs focus on pillar stabilization exercises like front, side, and back planks and ground based anti-rotational core work like chops variations and upper body twists with minimal movement in your lumbar spine.

2.) Back Machine

Well, if I HATE the abs machine, how do you think I’m going to feel about the back machine? This exercise is just plain out stupid!!

First of all, people already use too much “back” on most movements because of tight hips and inactive/weak glutes. Thus, I prefer to focus more on hip extension movements that strengthen your butt rather than continually overloading the spinal erectors. Plus, adding in corrective stretching for the hip flexor complex, the hip rotators, and the hamstring complex that opens up your hips and alleviates excessive spinal flexion and compressions is literally exactly what the doctor ordered.

Second of all, just like the abs machine, this bootleg exercise trains your body in one plane of movement in a fixed path, and as a result, this machine doesn’t work your key stabilizer muscles.

Lastly, the way that most people perform this movement in such an out of control manner for speed just makes me want to vomit. It literally looks like they are trying to lie down for reps. Is this the type of movement that we want to get really good at? I don’t think so!!

21 Century Training Upgrade: For a strong, stable back focus on deadlifts, good mornings, and hip extension variations. Also, you should be simultaneously focusing on the corrective stretching and self-massage of the Lumbo-Pelvic-Hip (LPH) complex.

3.) Leg Extension Machine

This exercise is a personal one for me. When I first started lifting weights as a stubborn 10^th grader who did whatever it took to keep pushing my training loads up. I abused this exercise like few others.

I remember maxing out the rack at 200 lbs and doing spastic sets of 20+ reps where the whole universal machine that the leg extension apparatus was attached to would shake like an episode of soul train.

Here’s the bottom line with this exercise. It will wreak havoc on your knees! The excessive compressions on your patella will without a doubt results in the brake down of articular cartilage which will in turn results in a bunch of arthroscopic knee surgeries to remove loose bodies and eventually full blown crippling arthritis. Avoid this machine like cancer!

21 Century Training Upgrade: For strong, stable knees, focus on both knee-dominant (lunge, step-up, and single-leg squat variations) AND hip-dominant single-leg exercises (single-leg hip extension, deadlift, and good morning variations) to prevent strength imbalances between limbs AND to prevent strength imbalances between your front and back thighs and your inner and outer thighs.

4.) Fly Machine

If your goal is tear your pecs and destroy your rotator cuff, then I highly recommend that you add this exercise to your routine. I think the chest fly machine actually gets even more use then the bench press does, which is considered to be the most popular exercise for guys.

Again, the use of a machine versus doing a dumbbell fly alternative eliminates the use of the key stabilizer muscles surrounding your shoulders. So in other words, if you must do flies, use dumbbells. Furthermore, this machine typically results in overuse injuries like shoulder impingement or biceps tendinitis.

21 Century Training Upgrade: For strong, stable shoulders focus on performing an equal amount of pushing and pulling exercises. In fact, more pulling exercises initially may be a good idea if you find yourself heavily internally rotated and hunchbacked from years of sitting at the desk. The best pushing exercise you can do is any push-up variation as it not only safely trains the entire front side of your body but also engages your upper back musculature, specifically your scapula stabilizers, in a way that the bench press does not.

5.) Elliptical Machine

Look- if you are really, really overweight and haven’t exercised in over a decade, then I think an elliptical has some use. But, other than that, I think it’s relatively useless.

Yes, it is a low-impact alternative to running on a treadmill, but there is very little range of motion during the movement and does not burn nearly as many calories as the machine claims it does.

Furthermore, the elliptical is not a good machine to do intervals on because it promotes excessive hyperextension of the knee. This can easily result in injury at high levels of speed and resistance.

At the end of the day, you can read a damn magazine while you’re on an elliptical, so how much benefit do you really think you will get from this overpriced waste of space?

21 Century Training Upgrade: For optimal results during your cardio training, you must focus on intervals. They burn 9 times more body fat than aerobics and also result in greater improvements in overall conditioning than long, slow, boring cardio. If you are overweight/de-conditioned and/or have joint issues, the best place to start an interval training program is on a spin bike, or better yet, an Airdyne Bike which has both upper and lower body attachments to make it more of a total body conditioning experience. Swimming is also another low impact exercise that uses full body.

6.) The Yes/No Machine- Abductor/Adductor Combo

Ah, the sex machine… this one just makes me smile. It certainly takes me back to the days where my meathead buddies and I would shamelessly gawk at this outrageously good looking gal who did 1,000 reps on the adductor/abductor machine to fit into her “skinny jeans.”

But, I can assure you this machine had nothing to do with her nice body. Rather it was a combo of genetics, a clean diet, and being a multi-sport athlete that did the trick.

Women all over the world seem convinced that this “naughty” exercise can somehow help them rid themselves of the thunder thigh/cellulite situation.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard: “What exercises can I do to get rid of this flab inside my leg?” Too many times!

If you’ve listened to some of my ranting and raving about “spot reduction”, you should know my stance on this. Seriously, no amount of direct inner or other hip-thigh work will burn that ugly fat covering that sexy toned musculature everyone wants to see, so just let it go.

The first thing you need to do is clean up all of the junk carbs in your diet and starting consuming lean proteins, healthy fats, and fruits and veggies every 2-4 hours while chugging water like a fish.

Then you need to get off this sexy machine and get real with a total body workout!

21 Century Training Upgrade: The best exercises for your inner and outer-hip thigh will come from band-resisted hip walk variations, side pillar variations, and any and all single-leg exercises, especially lateral lunges. My favorite lateral lunge is the Valslide Lateral Lunge that simultaneously stretches and strengthens your hip musculature.

7.) Leg Press Machine

It never ceases to amaze me how we all look for the easy way out when it comes to working out. It’s clear why people prefer to leg press- they get to lay or sit on their ass depending on the exact type of leg press machine being used.

If you want both nice legs and a flat midsection then you need to squat! And yes, you can’t squat lying down, sorry!

But squats are tough because they require a whole body effort, an effort most people aren’t willing to put in explaining why they get crap results form their workouts.

The leg press could very well be a major contributing cause for the rapidly increasing number of bulging and/or herniated discs among exercise enthusiasts. People always use way too much weight and use poor form resulting in brutally compressive forces on the spine.

Seriously, if you are opting to leg press over squatting, then you don’t know squat, pun intended ;)

21 Century Training Upgrade: The best (and safest) exercises for your lower body are a healthy combination of double-leg and single-leg exercises using free weights and body weight based exercises. Be sure to perform an equal amount of knee-dominant lower body exercises (e.g. squats and lunges) and hip-dominant lower body exercises (e.g. deadlifts and single-leg hip extensions) to make your knees, hips, and back bulletproof. In fact, most people are very knee-dominant and could benefit to start by performing a greater number of hip-dominant movements to balance out their lower body musculature.

You’ll notice once common trend among all of these crap exercises: they all involve MACHINES!

Get off those damn machines!!!!!! Focus on functional movements using free weights, bands, stability balls, etc. Not only will you ramp up your fat-burning and muscle-building pursuits, but more importantly you won’t end up hunchbacked in a wheel chair by the time you turn 50.

It’s go time,

Jared Woolever

PS- What other exercises do you see people doing in the gym that make you cringe? What other exercises do you absolutely hate? What exercises have gotten you hurt in the past? Please share your personal experiences by posting a comment to this blog post, thanks!