Gym idiots

So as a guy who has been going to the gym for a few years I've seen many people who don't know how to use machines correctly. Some morons are (for example) putting way too much weight on when they do standing biceps-curls with a bar just to look cool. The result is that they use their whole body to rock the wieght up and by doing so losing the whole purpose of the exercise.

When doing biceps-curls you can only put on so much weight that you can still do the exercise motion correctly. You only want to engage the desired muscle (in this case the biceps) as much as possible and avoid the other muscles because by using your back or something else to pull up the weight (well this speaks for itself) you lose the whole point of a "biceps" exercise.
I would rather recommend to use less weight and do more reps and always use full-range motion to engage the whole muscle and by doing so avoiding making it shorter and stiffer.

When I started working out the first thing I did was to speak to a personal trainer about how to use the machines correctly. I then did that workout for a few months and when I felt comfortable I started to test out other exercises and I watched a mega-ton of bodybuildning videos and tutorials for diffrent machines on youtube. Not that I want/wanted to be a bodybuilder but it's an awesome way of learning how to conduct certain exercises correctly and learning new ones as well. Plus it's a great motivation, atleast it is for me.

My point is don't hurt yourself in the gym! Learn before doing, it's the same principle as thinking before speaking. If you don't know how to use a machine or do an exercise ask somebody.


Some basic rules of all exercises:

1. In every exercis you should arch you back, this brings more stability and is very very important in dead lift for example where the risk of injury is extra high when doing it wrong.

2. Focus on the muscle, don't engage unnescessary muscles and ruin the exercise.

3. Don't use too much weight, this leads to doing the exercise incorrectly and can also end up in injury.


One of my favourite sites on this subject is gymidiots.com which essentially is a video archive of people who are useing machines incorrectly. Some are just sad and others hillarious but the essence of them all is they are all wrong.

Here are some of my favourites:
Also have a nice day everybody :)

What did we say about full-range motion? ;)

Not much to say here...

This is the textbook example of how to you ruin your back. The back should be arched and he should use the legs much more, this isn't a pure back exercise despite popular belief...