Perth Boot Camp Instructor Reveals 5 Worst Exercises

May 31, 2009 - PRLog -- TC claims:"One of the biggest concern fitness professional have are the massive volume of machines that made up the typical workout program of a typical gym goers. The problems of most machines are that they limit the range of motions, do not teach the body to balance and do not appropriately prepare you for everyday "functional" movements in multi-planes of movements."

This may sounds counterintuitive to many of us who have been misinformed that machines are safer to use because of the smaller learning curves and the ease in which you can adjust the resistance for your current fitness level. It is true that machines are safer to use. However, the downside of long-term usage of machines far outweigh the short-term safety. Because machine exercises do not train the key stabiliser muscles surrounding your joints that are heavily responsible for keeping them strong and stable. The strong muscles are useless if they do not have strong stabilisers to hold the joints together while engaging in everything "functional" movements. In short, the machine exercises are setting you up for muscle imbalances and short and long-terms injuries that will slow your results to a grinding halt. Furthermore,machines tend to isolate muscles parts resulting in recruitment of limited muscle group that results in limited fat burning and lean muscle growth development. TC said:"Being functional does not mean training on a fitball, balanced disc or bosu ball as advocated by "functional-training" gurus. It's about the mimicking your daily movement patterns with the exercises that can improve your daily performance. Standing on a fitball certainly does not improve daily performance unless you're working in Cirque Du Soleil"  

1. Abdominal Weight Loaded Machine
Crunches are not great exercises given that the human body does not perform crunching motion in daily life. Furthermore, they don’t provide the stabilization work your core muscles really needs to function optimally, improve posture, and to prevent injury.

2. Back Extension Machine
Most people use way too much back muscles during most of the exercises. Using this piece of weight machine just reinforce the usage. People can prevent themselves from getting hurt in the lower back by doing more functional exercises such as squats and deadlifts that recruit more of the butt muscles known as gluteal muscles. This result in less stress on the lower back due to the strain being more distributed to the gluteal muscles.

3. Leg Extension
This exercise will put you on the fast track to patellar tendonitis in the short run and knee surgeries and arthritis in the long run. The more weight you use the more shearing force on the knees. Your best bet is to focus on lunging exercises to build firm, toned legs and stable knees.

4. Leg Curl Machine
This exercise will put you on the fast track to patellar tendonitis in the short run and knee surgeries and arthritis in the long run. The more weight you use the more shearing force on the knees. Your best bet is to focus on lunging exercises to build firm, toned legs and stable knees.

5. Leg Press Machine
Using the leg press is an easy way out for not doing the squats. Although they may seem to work on the same set of muscles, the leg press is just not the same as doing squats. The problem with the leg press is that it does not work your core muscles and leg muscles nearly half as hard as the squats. First, the legs do not learn how to balance on user's body weight and secondly you can develop strong leg muscles with a weak core that do not complement each other when transferred to functional movement.

TC (Dip Sc & Ex Sc) is a cerified personal trainer, kettlebell instructor and strength & conditioning coach who runs boot camps and personal training services in Perth. To book him to speak at your club, business, or organization, please contact him by email at info@perth-women-bootcamp.com.au or by phone at 0430 280 919. For a free two-week trial to his  perth boot camp to experience the best personal training in Perth, please visit http://www.perth-women-bootcamp.com.au. He also runs a FREE Saturday boot camp in Nedlands. For more details, go to http://www.meetup.com/Perth-boot-camp/.

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TC Professional Fitness Coaching runs boot camp in Perth for women and provides in-door and outdoor personal training services in the suburbs of Nedlands, Claremont, Crawley and Subiaco.