Exercise Creativity Gone Wrong

Coaches and trainers are always seeking ways to add variety into training programs. It’s easy to stick with the same exercises and just change sets, reps and exercise order. But to really keep things interesting, you’ve gotta get creative.

Too little variety can lead to staleness, plateaus and boredom. But too much variety can be counterproductive or even dangerous.

It’s important to strike a balance between the tried-and-true mainstay exercises (squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, pull-ups) and more creative movements. There are countless ways to manipulate any number of exercises. The trick is finding the right combination of creativity and utility.

That said, a lot of people get carried away with the creativity aspect. And by carried away I mean “do stupid, ridiculous exercises to get attention at Planet Fitness.”

Fred Dimenna, one of my professors and a former WNBF pro bodybuilder, likes to talk about “right link vs. wrong link” when discussing exercise selection. He preaches the importance of making exercises difficult for the right reasons, not just for the sake of difficulty. This concept is lost on too many people, who make fancy tweaks to an exercise without considering the actual purpose of their variation.

To determine “right link vs. wrong link,” all you have to do is ask two questions: 1) What muscles are you targeting? 2) What muscles fatigue first? If the answer to question 1 isn’t the same as question 2…

I remember reading something by Jim Wendler a while back where he called a Zercher squat a “party trick” that is pretty useless in most training programs. Zerchers fall into the category of “wrong link,” because what makes the exercise difficult (holding the weight in the crooks of the arm) doesn’t challenge the target muscle group (the lower body). The exercise is difficult for the wrong reason.

And of course, the obligatory Zercher squat fail video:

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We’re going to analyze five popular exercises that fall into the “party trick” or “wrong link” category. You’ve undoubtedly seen wackos doing these at the gym, desperately vying for the attention of other easily impressionable gym goers.

1. OVERHEAD SQUATS

I wrote an in-depth article about the overhead squat and how it’s awesome as an assessment tool. But honestly, it’s not good for much else.

People obsess about how “functional” overhead squats are and how if you can do a perfect overhead squat with a loaded barbell you must be, like, the Michael Jordan of fitness.

But the last time I checked, you can move a lot more weight with your glutes, hamstrings and quads than you can hold overhead. And you can hold a safer, more stable position with the bar on your back than you can with a bar held overhead.

The functional police would yap about “core stability” and all that jazz. But most people can only overhead squat a fraction of what they back squat. And since when is the back squat a slouch in the “core stability” department? The core still sits between the bar and your legs regardless of whether its on your back or over your head. And you need a damn strong core to squat double your body weight. I’d take a 180-pound athlete who squats 360 over the same athlete who can overhead squat 180 pounds.

The only argument I could see for using the overhead squat is for an Olympic lifter looking to build his strength to stand up during the snatch. But you don’t see many good Olympic lifters overhead squatting. When they’re not doing thousands of picture-perfect reps of the snatch or clean and jerk, they’re crushing front squats because strong legs drive you out of the bottom of deep squat. And overhead squats don’t build strong legs. Period.

WHY IT SUCKS: Inferior for building leg strength, places shoulders in unstable position

DO THIS INSTEAD: Front squats with a clean grip or cross grip

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2. REVERSE GRIP BENCH PRESS

I remember my freshman year of college seeing one of the biggest kids in the gym doing reverse grip bench press. Everyone thought it was so cool, and for the next couple weeks, everyone was trying out this unique exercise.

Fast forward four years, and the aforementioned bench press entrepreneur hadn’t put a single pound on his max bench. Maybe he should have spent more time using exercises that actually work instead of practicing party tricks.

The biggest problem with the reverse grip bench is the danger of the bar falling out of your hands and rearranging your face. You have to extend your wrists back toward your feet to keep the bar from rolling, which isn’t very wrist friendly. And you can’t “crush the bar” by squeezing your hands and flexing your wrists, which limits the amount of weight you can handle.

The only possible benefit I see with the reverse grip bench is that it forces you to tuck your elbows and touch the bar low on your chest, which is easier on the shoulders than a flared-elbow bench press.

The research shows that there is no significant difference in chest or triceps activity between a regular grip and a reverse grip, so that squashes any argument that the reverse grip bench “targets the lower pecs” or “hits the tri’s harder.”

WHY IT SUCKS: Doesn’t change muscular activity, increases chances of suprise reconstructive facial surgery

DO THIS INSTEAD: Close grip bench press, neutral grip bench press with dumbbells or Swiss bar

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3. WINDSHIELD WIPERS

This is one of my favorites. Of all the party tricks you see in the gym, nothing shreds the abs – or the lumbar spine – like windshield wipers.

Dr. Stuart McGill, the world’s foremost expert on spine biomechanics, rocked the fitness world in 2002 when he shed light on the nasty degenerative effects of spinal movements like crunches and sit-ups. Well, the same goes for windshield wipers.

Tony Gentilcore noted in an article about the dark side of yoga that the L1-L4 vertebrae naturally have a combined two degrees of rotation. That’s not much. So when we rotate, the most of the movement is made up by the thoracic spine and the hips. So why would we take a structure built for stability and then crank on it like a Bop It toy?

If you’ve read my site before, you know that from both a health and performance standpoint, I prefer ab exercises that resist movement rather than create it. So save your spine (and potentially your tailbone pending a tumble from the top of the pull-up bar) and do some anti-rotation and anti-flexion core exercises instead.

WHY IT SUCKS: Repeated spinal flexion/rotation is a recipe for a low back injury

DO THIS INSTEAD: Farmer’s walks, Pallof presses, hanging leg raises, anti-rotation chops

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4. JUMP SQUATS

Landing from a jump is one of the most strenuous actions you can do in the weight room. Every landing requires the spine, hips, knees and ankles to absorb ground reaction forces as high as seven times an athlete’s body weight. Wanna make it even more stressful? Throw a loaded barbell on your back.

The first steps I always take to reduce the stress of a training program are to reduce spinal loading and limit jump landings. Jump squats double up on the stress. Prepare for your joints to take a beating.

Jump squats also tend to alter jump technique, reducing its application to vertical jump performance. Effective plyometric training requires the athlete to minimize ground contact time and learn to absorb force by “sticking” the landing (landing “soft” but without letting the hips and knees flex too much). It’s tough to minimize ground contact time with a loaded bar on your back, and most athletes dip into a deeper squat to get more of a counter movement between each rep.

You’ll get less of the negative aspects by doing dumbbell jump squats, but you’re still better off using unloaded jump variations and simply getting stronger in the lower body.

WHY IT SUCKS: Dangerously high ground reaction forces, spinal loading, small carry-over to vertical jump performance

DO THIS INSTEAD: Box jumps, depth jumps, broad jumps, contrast training (heavy lower body strength movement immediately followed by a jumping movement)

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5. ANYTHING ON A BOSU BALL (AND ALMOST ANYTHING ON A STABILITY BALL)

What’s the fastest way to make an uninformed exerciser think you’re the Albert Einstein of fitness? Have them do any old exercise while standing on a bright shiny stability ball.

Stability balls, Bosu balls, wobble boards and all that other unstable surface gimmicks are the definition of “wrong link.” There are very few cases where exercising on an unstable surface makes sense (e.g. wobble board for ankle rehab, stability ball ab rollouts), but 99 percent of the time you’re making the exercise hard for the wrong reason.

Let’s go back to our “right link vs. wrong link” test…

Exercise: Stability ball dumbbell bench press

Target Muscles: Chest

What Fatigues First: Abs… WRONG LINK

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Exercise: Bosu ball single leg squats

Target Muscles: Legs

What Fatigues First: Nothing cuz you fall on your ass… WRONG LINK

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Exercise: Lying hamstring curl on stability ball

Target Muscles: Hamstrings

What Fatigues First: Hamstrings… RIGHT LINK

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You get the idea. Eric Cressey did an awesome study about the effects of unstable surface training on markers of athletic performance like counter movement jump and 40-yard dash. Two groups did identical 10-week training programs, except one group did lunges on a Dynadisc and the other group did regular lunges. The results? The regular lunge group improved significantly more on almost all the tests. The simple explanation? Unstable surface training robs you of potential strength gains, and gaining strength is the simplest way to improve athletic performance.

WHY IT SUCKS: “Wrong link” 99 percent of the time.

DO THIS INSTEAD: The stable surface version of all exercises, unless the unstable surface causes increased fatigue of the target muscles.

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AND NOW YOU KNOW

The bottom line is there must be a good reason behind every exercise you do. Use common sense. And as much as I hate to say it, use science to justify it if you have to.

If you’ve unknowingly performed some of these awful exercises in the past, I forgive you. We all make mistakes. But now you know, so ignorance is no excuse. Training time is precious. Don’t waste it doing exercises that don’t work.

What other exercises fail the “right link vs. wrong link” test? Share your thoughts!