Syke. There are no inherently bad exercises.
Even to this today, we are led to believe that exercise selection is a dichotomous game of right or wrong based on the arbitrary movement standards that have been created in the fitness world.
Despite popular contradictions, exercise is inherently safe, and our bodies are inherently adaptable to the imposed demands placed on it. Different exercises and techniques are not inherently good or bad, they simply just impose different structurally relative degrees of stimulus and adaptation.
In this article, I am going to work to debunk 3 exercises myths about dangerous exercises…
Top 3 ‘Dangerous’ Exercises:
1) Barbell Upright Row
How To:
1) Stand tall, holding a barbell, with your hands shoulder width apart, palms facing back to the wall behind you.
2) Pull the barbell as high as possible, keeping it close to your body, thinking about ‘pulling your T-Shirt up with the bar’, pointing your elbows to the sky.
3) Slowly lower the weight to back to the start position to finish the rep.
MYTH:
The upright row, specifically the barbell variation, is often shunned by fitness professionals as a dangerous exercise, putting your shoulder into an impinged position, putting you at risk of ‘shoulder impingement syndrome’.
DEBUNK:
Shoulder impingement syndrome doesn’t actually exist, so this logic is flawed… If shoulder impingement syndrome existed, then we would expect a link between less subacromial space (shoulder impingement) and shoulder pain.
A 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis by Park et al. (1) found no such link, supporting the shift in diagnosis of shoulder pain by McFarland et al. (2) from shoulder impingement syndrome to ‘rotator cuff disease'.
The upright row is not bad, it is actually a very good exercise. But upright rowing more than you are physically prepared for may be.
2) Kettlebell Jefferson Curl
How To:
1) Stand tall on a low step or plyo box, holding a kettlebell in both hands.
2) Slowly lower the weight towards the floor, keeping it close to your body, letting your spine flex as much as possible.
3) Slowly ‘roll’ your spine back out as you stand back up with the weight to complete the rep.
MYTH:
Spinal flexion is consistently demonized in society, whether that be in sitting posture or in the gym, with exercises like the Back Squat or Deadlift, as a major risk factor for lower back pain. So, you can imagine the ‘colon capitol O’ faces made by the movement pessimists amongst us when they see someone doing a loaded Jefferson Curl in the gym.
DEBUNK:
Spinal flexion is impossible to avoid. During daily life and during the majority of exercises. In fact, we can’t even reliably visually detect spinal flexion during a squat until about 30 degrees of flexion (3). So even in instances where you think you have avoided spinal flexion, you probably haven’t. And that is FINE. Never mind the fact that a 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis by Saraceni et al., (4) found no difference between lumbar flexion while lifting and low back pain; if spinal flexion was the cause of injury, you would expect a link here.
Spinal flexion is safe and unavoidable, and given that consistent links between appropriate dosage (5) of exercise (which inherently exposes you to spinal flexion) and reduced lower back pain, it would seem beneficial to expose people to controlled spinal flexion in the gym to make them more resilient to heavy spinal loading outside of the gym and reduce the risk of lower back pain, given that it is one of the most wide spread lifestyle induced physical disabilities in the world (6).
Enter the Jefferson Curl. A brilliant exercise.
3) Running
How To:
1) Go outside or step on a treadmill.
2) Run.
3) Stop running at some point and carry on with your day.
MYTH:
It is often thought that running is bad for your knees and thus leads to people avoiding it or even loading the knees all together.
DEBUNK:
If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone claim that running is bad for their knees… Boy, would I have a lot of nickels.
Ponzio et al. (7) looked into the prevalence of arthritis in marathon runners versus active and inactive U.S populations. They found marathon runners to have the lowest rates of arthritis. While this does not directly show causal effect (the marathon runners could have been born with stronger knees), if running was such a high-risk factor, it seems improbable marathon runners would have the lowest rates of arthritis, irrespective of inherent extrinsic factors, given the extreme nature of running a marathon.
You know what is bad for your knees? Doing nothing.
If you want to run, fantastic, start running, it is great for your knees. But be sure to progressively overload how much you expose yourself to it and account for factors such as BMI or previous injury in regards to the degree and rate of which you expose yourself to running.
Conclusion:
All exercise is good in the right context. Try to change from your outlook from a movement pessimistic to a movement optimist and reap the benefits of gradual exposure of your body to a variety of movements and exercises, making you more resilient and confident with the demands of day-to-day life or your sporting endeavors.
P.S. I hope you weren't actually expecting a picture of me running...
Author:
Ewan Hammond (Bsc; PhD Researcher; Professional Fitness Writer; Personal Trainer; Online Coach)
References:
· Falk, J., Aasa, U. and Berglund, L., 2021. How accurate are visual assessments by physical therapists of lumbo-pelvic movements during the squat and deadlift?. Physical Therapy in Sport, 50, pp.195-200.
· Hartvigsen, J., Hancock, M.J., Kongsted, A., Louw, Q., Ferreira, M.L., Genevay, S., Hoy, D., Karppinen, J., Pransky, G., Sieper, J. and Smeets, R.J., 2018. What low back pain is and why we need to pay attention. The Lancet, 391(10137), pp.2356-2367.
· McFarland, E.G., Maffulli, N., Del Buono, A., Murrell, G.A., Garzon-Muvdi, J. and Petersen, S.A., 2013. Impingement is not impingement: the case for calling it “Rotator Cuff Disease”. Muscles, ligaments and tendons journal, 3(3), p.196.
· Owen, P.J., Miller, C.T., Mundell, N.L., Verswijveren, S.J., Tagliaferri, S.D., Brisby, H., Bowe, S.J. and Belavy, D.L., 2020. Which specific modes of exercise training are most effective for treating low back pain? Network meta-analysis. British journal of sports medicine, 54(21), pp.1279-1287.
· Park, S.W., Chen, Y.T., Thompson, L., Kjoenoe, A., Juul-Kristensen, B., Cavalheri, V. and McKenna, L., 2020. No relationship between the acromiohumeral distance and pain in adults with subacromial pain syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Scientific Reports, 10(1), pp.1-14.
· Ponzio, D.Y., Syed, U.A.M., Purcell, K., Cooper, A.M., Maltenfort, M., Shaner, J. and Chen, A.F., 2018. Low prevalence of hip and knee arthritis in active marathon runners. JBJS, 100(2), pp.131-137.
· Saraceni, N., Kent, P., Ng, L., Campbell, A., Straker, L. and O'Sullivan, P., 2020. To flex or not to flex? Is there a relationship between lumbar spine flexion during lifting and low back pain? A systematic review with meta-analysis. journal of orthopaedic & sports physical therapy, 50(3), pp.121-130.
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