Hey guys, in this video I want to talk to you about how to avoid the most common mistakes in everyday exercises in order for you to see better results. Since I’ve been a personal trainer for over 16 years, I’ve seen it all for the range of people. Unfortunately, I find that the most common exercises are done incorrectly because they don’t know how to engage proper muscles. However, it’s a really easy fix. Follow along with me in my video and find out how to fix improper form so that you can start seeing results!
1. Squats
The first exercise is squat, the most common exercise to work your legs, quads, butt, hamstrings. When you’re in a proper squat form, you want your feet a little wider than your hip width distance. Obviously there’s many ways you can do a squat, but this is a main place to start. When you’re in your squat stance, you want to push your hips back first. Keep your arms out to shoulder level. That just makes sure that your body’s staying upright. Next, draw your belly in, and start to push your hips back and get into the heels, kind of sitting back. Ease your way down all the way to almost 90 degrees. And when you come up, squeeze in your glutes, sending the hips and really engage the glutes. If you don’t engage the right muscles, you may be missing out on a very important piece. Make sure that your toes are lifted and that you’re watching your knees. You don’t want your knees to go past your ankles, and you want to make sure the knees are right in line. So alignment is key. And again, squeeze at the top.
2. Lunges
The next exercise is lunges. For this exercise, it is really important to get your alignment right. So when you’re standing, you want your feet under your hip. Then you want to drive it back so when you’re kneeling down, setting on the floor, you have 90 degrees in the front and 90 degrees in the back. If you think about alignment from your head to your heel, it’ll be ears over shoulders over hips over knees. And that knee when it’s lifted is in line with your heel. From there, your front heel is going to take your pressure. Your body’s over the back leg so there’s no translations or any pain in the front leg. Just straight up and down, pressing from the back toe, pressing from the front heel. A common mistake with lunges is that the chest wants to drop forward, causing the knee to go forward. When you make that mistake, you’re putting so much pressure and potential injury in that area, so back it up. Use the muscles of your quads, hamstrings and glutes and you’ll be much safer and see much better results.
3. Deadlifts
The next exercise is a common deadlift. There’s many ways to do them. I like to do a stiff legged deadlift. I’m just gonna use some light weight. Again, line up your feet under your hip. First, you want to make sure you’re tipping from your hip, keeping your back flat and going to just below the knees to start. Make sure you feel a tight stretch in the hamstrings and slow on the return up. While performing deadlifts, you want to push your weight into the heels, back up your hips, keep your hands close to your legs and squeeze at the top. Another common mistake I see is when the knees roll inward. In order to combat this, roll open the knees, ground into your feet, drag it down, pull your shoulders back, and set them down into your shoulder blades and look ahead.
4. Push Ups
The fourth exercise is push ups. First, to set up go ahead and lay down. When you put your hands to your side, they should be right to the sides of your chest and your elbow should make a 90 degree. So when you press up, your elbows aren’t poking out too far. Make sure your arms are wrapped in and in line with your chest. For perfect form it’s necessary to draw your belly in, hover right over your hands and then press straight up. A lot of what I see is elbows bowed out, the hips go up and the trunk dropping the belly. It’s important to engage your abs, glutes and to wrap those elbows down, and hover. So you’ll inhale on the way down, exhale on the way up. The same thing goes for when you’re on your toes. Make sure you have the strength for it. If you don’t have proper form, get back to your knees and prepare by drawing the core in and making those elbows in line.
5. Dips
The next common upper body exercise that’s done incorrectly are dips, you can do this on a bench or a chair. When you want to set up for your dip, make sure your hands are inside the line of your hips and not too far out. If they’re too far out, it’s going to cause improper form. Your elbows will going to bow out, your shoulders are going to eat your neck and you’re not going to get the right exercise. You’re not going to feel it. So what you want to do is place your fingers forward, elbows wrapped in, shoulders draw back, drop the hips, lift your chest, bring the belly in and extend all the way up to the top of the head. Make sure you keep a nice long spine. Inhale down, exhale up at the top. Focus on squeezing those arms in. Draw the elbows towards each other, and back down nice and slow.
6. Planks
And the last exercise that I commonly see with improper form is the classic plank. There’s many ways you can do this. I’m going to do it from the forearms. So when you’re setting up your plank, you want to make sure you’re in alignment. In order to stay in alignment, keep your shoulders over your elbows and you’re going to press into your forearms. Now you’re going to tuck your toes under and lift the knees. Now scoop your tailbone under and draw your belly in. Look ahead. So many times I find the hips are poked back. You’re not engaging your core and when the belly drop it creates a lot of low back pain. So scoop the tailbone under, squeeze the glutes and even lock the leg. You could easily do this from your knees if you’re not ready for a full plank. This is a modified version. If you want to do planks on your hands, keep the same form. So pressing into the hand, still stacking the shoulders over elbows over wrists. Looking ahead, drawing the belly in, squeezing the legs and the butt. Same thing from the knees, you’re still engaging the core and just holding and breathing, and make sure that the spine does not move.
So there you have it. The six most common exercises that are done incorrectly, but if done correctly, they’ll yield the best results. Hopefully you found this video helpful and share it with your family and friends.
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