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.