 Hey look, there are no dangerous exercises, so in terms of exercises, none of them are dangerous. Oh, you're going to get blasted. Wrong! You know what, you know why I want to say that? Because oftentimes you'll hear people say things like upright rows are bad for the shoulders or if you do a lateral with your pinky higher than your thumb, that's bad for your shoulders or if you do a squat this way and behind your neck. Yes, and the reality is if you have the required control, stability, and mobility in connection to doing that exercise, it is not a dangerous exercise. What makes it dangerous is your body and your lack of ability to control. You cannot help yourself, we were supposed to explain all that. This is actually an interesting conversation because there's more to that. You know, I remember being a trainer in the first like five years or whatever and you start to build up a little bit of knowledge and experience and then you go through this phase where you kind of probably think you know it all or whatever and I see this a lot. I see this exaggerated in social media life or world or whatever and you see a lot of trainers and fitness people that like to point out people doing quote-unquote stupid exercises. You know, oh it's a stupid exercise or oh it's a dangerous exercise or oh they shouldn't be doing that or that's they're an idiot or like calling out people that are exercising when you don't even know who that person is and I fell into that trap of being like that. You know, knowing a little bit enough to get me by to teach others to get in shape and knowing what is considered dangerous for most people or exercises that don't give you a lot of benefit for most people and so all of a sudden you assume that when you see this person in the gym that's doing this exercise you go oh that's stupid and oh you point it out but the reality is I have no idea what their desired outcome is. I have no idea what they're training for. It could have massive application for what for what they're trying to. Yeah and it may be ridiculous for 99% of the population but how dare I look at this movement that I think is ridiculous and silly so long as they're performing it in a controlled fashion and they're not going to hurt themselves and I think that a lot of trainers jump to that conclusion that like oh well that's a great example of this is the the Jefferson curl. Yeah right so if you've ever seen that. That has to be the one exercise that looks like oh my gosh you can't do that. Right if you see a Jefferson curl and you've never seen one before right if you if you see that for the first time and you and you're a trainer it kind of breaks a lot of the the fundamental rules that you've been taught for good mechanics for bending or hinging over right but that that specific exercise is is not supposed to be like a deadlift it's supposed to be a different movement and it is it's intended to strengthen and challenge all the muscles surrounding around the spine and your core and if done properly can be a very phenomenal exercise yet I know that most people I probably wouldn't train that but I look differently at movements like that that in the past I would probably go or even here's another one look at LeBron James doing a quarter squat or you know or or anybody for that matter LeBron James is someone famous but see someone doing a quarter squat and then right away we want I mean there's dedicated there's pages dedicated to talking shit about these people that are doing movements like that when you don't know what this person does for a living you don't know what apt adaptation they're they're going after so who are you to judge whether that's a good or a bad movement yeah I think you if you're experienced you can watch someone do an exercise and notice that in many cases that oh they don't like they lack the mobility they lack the connection right I could do that for the for I'd say the most part maybe not every single time but for the most part but but that being said there's a lot of exercises that people write off because they say don't do that it's dangerous the truth is if you own the exercise it's not dangerous if you can do the movement well there's nothing dangerous about what that movement is and that's really it so the blanket you know bad exercise good exercise or too dangerous don't do it nobody should ever do that and Jefferson Crow is my favorite because it's literally you're rounding your back you're bending over your but you know that you know that exercise was a staple among was gymnast and Soviet era wrestlers in fact they did the Jefferson curl with a zurcher position so they were bending all the way down and it was a rounded back and then around and then as long as you can generate tension and you can maintain stability and control and strength in that position like it's a valid movement and that's the thing it's like the prerequisites to a lot of these movements they need to apply but as far as a judgemental trainer that's in the gym I do find there is there's instances where you'll see somebody with terrible form performing a certain type of movement where it does warrant a conversation in terms of well you might you might not want to keep applying this technique to this specific exercise because it's gonna over time it you know on the stress may end up finding its way into you know your joints your knees like your lower back like there's a better way to perform and do these exercises so I find value in you know like making sure the quality element is there but in terms of like your original statement of the exercise itself there is a biomechanical way to pull it off as long as it's done with good form and the prerequisites are applied well listen if there's ever going to be a time in your sport or your day where you're going to move in that range of motion it makes sense to strengthen in that range of motion it i.e. the gymnast or the wrestlers they're contorting their body in these weird positions and so that you want to be strong in this familiar with in this rolled up extended position that you may not normally get in normal life but if I'm wrestling on the ground with someone if I'm folded over like a lawn chair I want to be strong in that position along those lines let's say you strengthen your body with what's considered traditional perfect form and you never strengthen your body in those positions how you get hurt and then you get hurt right because you generate all this force and then as soon as you move outside that position you lack the stability and control to manage the force that you might have generated going into it and that's how you get injured this is part of the reason why we see normal people get injured doing the most basic things like reaching back and feeding their kid in the back seat or pulling a weed from the from the ground or picking up a bottle of shampoo in the shower these are the most some of the most basic movements but because they're twisting and rotating and they never do that and they never do that in their training then it doesn't take much for them to tweak something or to injure themselves and so again you might see someone doing this weird rotating type of movement or motion inside the gym and go oh that is stupid or dangerous or you should know but the truth is you may if you do that sometime in your in in your day to day and you and you're not strong on that you you're at risk now a big part of that and this is this is needs to be made very clear you have to own the movement right so you can look i'll tell you what the most basic movement a barbell curl can be very dangerous for somebody who lacks the prerequisite skill mobility and connection right a simple exercise like a barbell curl could be dangerous for someone barbell squats all the way down can be dangerous for someone or they could be very safe for someone right it depends on do you control the weight do you have this stability the mobility are your joints supporting the weight in the sense that you know your end of range of motion is your spine or is it the muscles that are supporting your spine this is all very important you use the example of a gymnast you know i had a gymnast that worked for me years ago i learned so much just from watching this guy because he would do movements like he would do dips and he would go so low in the parallel dip bars and i remember thinking oh his shoulders have got to be wrecked and yet he had some of the healthiest shoulders and i remember talking about it and he goes oh yeah he goes i couldn't do that when i first started training he goes i had to really build the strength and stability to be able to do that but now i have so much control in that range of motion now if i tried to do that without building up to it for sure i would hurt myself now it is true that exercises that not not all exercises are created equal and that some exercises if your form is off a little bit the risk goes up quite a bit usually it's the compound you know the compound complex lifts but nonetheless movements if you can do them right and you control them right and you have the stability they're not dangerous my favorite examples are the behind the neck exercises behind the neck pull down behind the neck press like olympic lifters do behind the neck presses all the time in fact they they catch the weight on their traps yeah all the time most bodybuilders would hurt their shoulders doing that because they don't have the the stability to do it yeah i got to give a bit of a shout out it's i think his handle is atlas power shrugged but i follow this guy total unconventional lifter and bring him back a lot of the really old school movements and barbell movements you know bent presses he does things where he's basically he's doing like a clean behind his back and he'll do like hack squats and things you know with his with a barbell behind him those are old school really old school techniques but it just for a common person walking by they would probably be like whoa stop you can hurt yourself what are you doing you know and this guy's like showed his whole process of getting strong in these old school movements and built himself up to be resilient enough to to pull these movements off yeah really the injuries occur and they can occur with any exercise and of course like i said earlier um some exercises if you go outside of perfect form and control the risk goes up dramatically whereas with other exercise the risk doesn't go up so much but if you hurt yourself doing an exercise it's because you didn't own it that's all it is like you either use too much weight for the type of strength that you have you lacked the stability you lacked the mobility you just didn't own the exercise and that's why you got hurt that's the only reason you get hurt an exercise won't hurt you if you own it and i don't care what the exercise is so you see videos of of these trainers and coaches saying things like you know don't do side laterals with your pinkies higher than your thumb because it could place your shoulder and shoulder impingement and whatever not if you own the exercise now i will agree it it's more complex it requires more stability it requires different strength and stability that may be some people own but that doesn't mean the exercise is dangerous and again i like to point to those behind the neck exercises because like behind the neck pull downs you know in the 60s and 70s that was a staple at pull-ups they would do behind the neck pull-ups all day long in defense of the trainers that used to because i was part of this group that used to talk shit about the behind the neck everything and going deeper than 90 and the deep dips and all this stuff your national certifications said that i mean i remember being at least two or three national certifications deep in a couple years experience yep that's my point they said don't go down below 90 degrees i mean i was literally that guy who was training behind a client when they were doing like dumbbell bench press and letting their elbows would touch my my hands okay back up you know or their dips i would have my hand where their their chest would hit okay back up you know i didn't want them going deeper than that because i thought it put them at risk because that's everything that was what we were taught we were taught to do that and you know it's so funny because i don't think i ever thought to challenge that it just made sense like oh yeah you know that's it's putting them at risk why would we do that and i i can stimulate the muscle just fine by going just down to 90 degrees but you know never dawn on me like yeah you stop doing that and you lose the ability to do that so what happens in real life when you accidentally move in that that range of motion we can move like a robot your whole life yeah like you just it just didn't dawn on me till way later in my career i same thing my first certification was was not even a national cert so when i started with 24 our fitness they had their own certificates no it was 24 our fitness university yes and i remember when i this was 19 i want to say 97 and i remember the instructor explaining why we should not go all the way down on a bench press so he said stop at 90 degrees and then what he did is he had a towel this was his example and it like stuck with me i'm like oh my god that makes sense he twit he said this is what it's like when you go all the way down and he took the towel and he twisted it really tight and then he started bending it he's like this is what happens to your shoulder and of course i don't question him as the instructor right so i taught everybody at 90 degrees later on i understood how the scapula moved and the shoulder was moved and i read books on evolution how we have these these this incredible mobility and control with our shoulder one thing we evolved when this is with is that these incredible shoulders allow us to throw with accuracy and all that stuff and i remember thinking what if i just strengthened that position i was able to move within that and then i started training that way and of course you get better results but it's you know it reminds me of it reminds me of when people say um oh you got always lift with your legs because they're so afraid of their backs so everything looks like a like a front squat when they pick it up and it's like okay what you're basically doing is you're trying to remove all potential risk by limiting your range of motion so much but the reality is if you do that all the time you are actually setting yourself up for more potential injury in the future because then that's all you know how to do that's exactly what happened to me i mean i i had i had more shoulder issues more hip and low back issues uh in you know my early mid 20s than i do now 40 doing everything at 90 degrees because i was shortening everything up and that's what you don't realize too is that you're not only are you shorting up but then you're getting really strong and tight in that positions which is even more you'd be better off not doing anything you know and and and like what just see where where life takes me than to get really buff in the shortened range of motion because then you have all this power and strength but then you have no control in where the body technically could go hey if you enjoyed that clip you can find the full episode here or you can find other clips over here and be sure to subscribe