Don’t lock your joints

The phrase “Don’t lock your joints” refers to your elbows and your knees. Locking a joint means straightening it so completely that it moves past the point where it normally sits at rest. For example, you don’t usually stand with your quadriceps (front thigh muscles) as tight as can be with your kneecaps pulled up; that’s a locked knee. Locking your knees isn’t only bad news for your knee joints, but it also causes lower back pain. It can even lead to more serious injuries. One of our friends actually knew someone who passed out when he was singing at a choir concert because he locked his knees — he fell right off the back of the riser. And locking the knees is a way of cheating when you perform exercises in a standing position, such as the lateral raise and the barbell biceps curl.
Locking your elbows places excessive pressure on your elbow joints, tendons, Constant elbow locking causes tennis elbow (an inflammation of the elbow tendons), even if you’ve never held a tennis racket in your hand. Locking your elbows also contributes to bursitis through the rupturing of the bursa (little lubrication capsules) located in your joints. Bursitis
results in swelling, pain, and tenderness at the elbow. Snapping your elbows also is a form of cheating because the weight is temporarily shifted off your muscle and on to the bone. When you snap your elbows, your muscles fail to get the proper workout.

SStand up tall with square shoulders and a lifted chest

Keep your head centered between your shoulders, and don’t round your shoulders forward. In other words, avoid slouching. Your chest should be comfortably lifted, not forced; you needn’t stand like a soldier at attention. Avoid arching your upper back and pushing your ribs forward.

Pull in your abdominals

Place your hand over your belly button and gently pull your belly button in and away from your hand; that’s what it feels like to pull in your abdominal muscles. Don’t try to create a vacuum or suck your stomach into your ribs as if someone was going to punch you. Just hold your abs slightly in toward your spine. Tightening your abs helps hold your torso still when you exercise and keeps your back from arching or rounding — mistakes that can lead to back injury.

Tackling the Basic Info

For every muscle group presented in this blog (such as back, chest, or shoulders), first we show the non-machine exercises — moves involving dumbbells, barbells, or no equipment at all. Next are exercises that do require weight machines. Explanations include at least one machine per muscle group (except the abdominals). Figures 1 and 2 show you the major muscle groups in your body.
If we tried to show you every exercise in existence, this blog would be thicker than the unabridged edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. So, we’ve chosen to present the most common, basic exercises — classic moves that not only are safe and appropriate for beginners but also are standard moves for veteran exercisers.
If you have knee, hip, back, or other orthopedic problems, look for the Joint Caution icon; this icon alerts you to exercises that you may want to avoid or modify. Instructions are given on how to adjust many of the exercises to work around your joint problems.
After presenting each exercise, the “Other options” section describes a number of other versions of the workout. Some of the options are easier than the basic version, requiring less coordination or strength. Others are tougher. Some options, neither easier nor harder than the basic version, simply work the muscle from a different angle.
After you feel comfortable with the basic version, expand your horizons by experimenting with the options. You may discover, for example, that you prefer to do the dumbbell shrug with a barbell instead. Or maybe you enjoy both versions and want to alternate them in your workouts. However, don’t get overly enthusiastic and try all options of an exercise in a single workout. Experiment with one or two new versions each time you work out, and concentrate on mastering the movement.

Carrying a Weight Plate Too Casually

We often listen to exercisers gripe that their backs hurt after they perform the bench press. Yet when we go to check out their technique, it looks impeccable. We’re baffled — until these people pop off the bench, slide the weight plates off the bar, and put them back on the weight tree. Ah ha! Mystery solved. It’s not the bench press or any other exercise that’s giving them an aching back; the way exercisers carry around those big, heavy weight plates is the culprit.

Carrying a weight plate the wrong way
Sometimes we see people carrying weight plates around the gym floor as if the plates were super-size Frisbees. Other lifters tuck plates under their arms as if they’re clutching a purse. Or they hold the plate on the edge of their fingertips with a straight arm and locked elbow, as if they’re carrying a bowling ball Carrying around a lot of weight with one hand tied behind your back may be the ultimate display of macho, but even if you’re a big, strapping fellow, this sort of behavior puts your body in a terribly unbalanced position because you’re adding all the weight only on one side of your body. Your elbows and shoulders bear more of the burden than they’re designed to handle. See photo A.

Carrying a weight plate the right way
Hold the plate close to your chest with both hands. Stand as close as you can to the bar, line up the hole in the plate with the bar, and then slide the plate on. Don’t just extend your arms out straight and toss the plate as if you’re performing some sort of ring-tossing circus act. When you pick up a plate off the floor or from a low rung on a weight tree, bend your knees as if you’re doing a squat, bring the weight in close to your chest, and stand up using your leg muscles, not your lower back. All this advice goes for lighter weights, too. See photo B.

Spotting Too Much — Or Not Enough

Most weight-training mistakes made don’t affect anyone but you. However, if you mess up while spotting someone else, you may be putting your friend (or soon-to-be ex-friend) at risk for injury. Or, at the very least, you may be depriving your buddy of an enjoyable and effective workout. When acting as a spotter, you need to walk that fine line between not helping enough and getting too involved.

Spotting the wrong way
Don’t zone out while you’re spotting someone. Spotting isn’t the time to contemplate peacekeeping solutions in the Middle East. If your buddy poops out in the middle of a set and you’re even a split second too late to grab the weight, your friend may get clunked on the head, chest, or some other body part. Your spottee may also tear a muscle or ligament while trying to do your job for you (that is, to save the weight from crashing). Pay attention. You would want the same courtesy paid to you. See Figure.

Spotting the right way
Tune out everything in the universe other than your spottee. Put your hands in the right place, and watch your buddy like a soldier guarding Buckingham Palace. Don’t wait for your spottee to scream, “Dude! Where are you?!”

Sitting Up Improperly from a Weight Bench

Liz was spotting a woman who was performing a textbook-perfect set of the dumbbell chest fly. The set was truly a thing of beauty —until right after her final repetition. Suddenly she extended her arms straight out, lowered the weights toward the floor, opened her hands, and let the weights roll off her palms. She then jerked herself upright and popped up off the bench. Overall, she managed to make about a half dozen mistakes on movements that weren’t even part of the actual exercise. Realize that you can’t let your guard down until you’ve safely gotten yourself out of the exercise position.

Sitting up the wrong way
In this blog, many exercises that you perform while lying on your back on the floor or on a weight bench are shown. When you sit up after doing these exercises, don’t jerk straight back up into a sitting position, especially if you’re holding weights. When you get up suddenly, you can adversely impact your blood pressure and experience a moment of dizziness. You want to avoid any type of sudden or jerky movement when you’re holding weight because the weight can create momentum and cause you to lose control over your movements.
Another no-no: bringing your arms straight out to the sides and dropping the weights, or twisting to either side to drop a weight. See photo A. You never want to drop weights. You always want to put weights down slowly and with control to avoid hurting yourself and others

Sitting up the right way
To protect your lower back when you get up off the floor, roll to the side and then use both arms to push up into a sitting position. Or you can hug one knee into your chest and gently rock yourself up. After performing an exercise involving dumbbells, such as the chest fly, bring the weights down into your chest, and then roll up. (When you begin the exercise, do the opposite: Bring the weights into your chest and rock yourself back on the bench.) See photo B.