Ditch the dips?
Yesterday I came across an article from Fitness Magazine titled “Six exercises you should never do again”.
As I watching live TV at the time and did not have an option to fast forward through the advert break, I read the article in it’s entirety. I won’t provide a link to the article as i’d prefer you didn’t waste five minutes of your life burning your eyeballs.
Taking cues from the title of the article I had expected to see such things as “squats on a swiss ball” (come on people it’s not the 90’s anymore) or bicep curls with weights lighter than the handbag you carry around all day, but you know what they say about “assumption” right? It makes an ass out of you and me!
It started out quite innocently the first exercise was the leg extension with the explanation
“There’s no functional benefit”,
OK fair enough unless you are the parent of a little person who “want’s to ride the horsie” (or a strong parent of not so little people) it would be rare to be seated whilst lifting your leg up and down with a weight “attached” to your lower leg.
Even the mention of behind the neck lat pull-downs and squatting using a smith machine had semi valid reasons BUT what irked me was when the article listed Tricep Dips with the reasoning;
“It’s a risk to lift your body weight when your upper arms are behind your torso.”
Um excuse me, am I the only person who regularly lifts themselves up (or lowers them self back down to the ground from seated) on a platform while my hands are behind me? How does one manage to lower them self down with their arms in front? And while I’m on my little rant, how is a close-grip bench press a functional movement?
I can’t quite comprehend how the same article will write off one exercise because it’s not a functional movement but dismiss one that can be viewed in use by the general public outside of a training environment. How about we swap the tricep dip (which very few people do anyway) with this generations answer to squatting on a swissball – the pistol on a kb.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should!
Till next time
