Dangerous exercises

[Simple Simon]

I'd like to state that these exercises are dangerous. So no matter how effective  you believe they are, do not do them, because the risk of injury is too high.

And I say this as someone with a permanently damaged elbow, as a result of some of these movements, which now makes me unable to perform a whole range of otherwise safe movements.

- Press Behind the neck: Too much stress on the shoulders

- curl grip barbell rows: a bicep tear waiting to happing

- curl grip pull downs: as per above, plus they basically encourage terrible form

- overhead tricep extensions: stress the elbows too much

In reality, any movement can be dangerous if it is performed poorly, but I think the above actually cannot be performed in a manner that will not eventually cause injury.

Not necessarily dangerous, but I found them difficult to do without eventually using poor form

T-bar rows
Front squats
Hack squats
Behind the neck pulldowns

[jimjohnson]

heavy d.l's scare me the most....I always worry about injuring my back doing them. Screw your back up once and bam..you won't be lifting heave ever again.

[Simple Simon]

I think I should move behind the neck pull downs to an actual dangerous exercise. They place too much stress on the shoulders, plus encourage poor form.

As an aside, they actually aren't a lat movement, they're a mid back exercise.

[Navigator]

Bench dips and dumbell flys are pretty efficient way to prematurely ruin your shoulders
Brett is right about long femur and squats - whenever I was doing squats with whatever perfect form, it always gave me knee and lowerback pain, even without any weights
Stick to leg press, lunges, split squats and seated leg extension machine if you are in this story unless you want to ruin your knees and lowerback

[Simple Simon]

^^ I've read that bench dips are dangerous for the shoulders. But I have to admit, I never had any issues with them myself. Fly's are dangerous? I've never heard that. But I think fly's are a useless exercise (for naturals). (Hey, there's another discussion thread.)

[khrazz]

No exercise is dangerous unless performed with very bad form in combination with big weights (AKA ego lifting)

Behind the neck barbell press is a great exercise, BUT you need to start very slow. And by very slow i mean  starting by lifting only the barbell (20kg). The problem most people face with BTNBP is that their shoulders have poor mobility either due to slouching in front of a desk or from too much pressing, which leaves their rear/mid delts untrained. It can take up to 3 months before you can safely add weights in BTNBP because you need to build your mobility up, and your "safe points" in order to know when you are going to fail and how you can safely drop the bar without hurting yourself. In the past i did BTNBP with a push-press , nothing happened to my shoulders, and in fact they grew tremendously from it. Just remember,if you want to add this exercise to your routine, start veeeery slow and build your mobility up. This is a great exercise because it removes the upper chest from the equation, and instead places a lot of focus on your delts (mostly rear and side delts) and traps. Also a tip, do it "klokov style" (like Dmitry Klokov) with your hands spread out instead of having them very close to your chest, what i found is that by doing this way you do not put any pressure on your shoulders (probably due to you spreading your lats when your arms are not close to your chest )

Bench dips, another great exercise. Again, you need to start slow in this one too, because you need to learn when you are going to fail the rep and stop (like BTNBP) instead of going to failure. Those exercises are NOT meant to drive your muscles to failure because thats when they can potentially get dangerous (because your body is in a locked position)

Behind the neck lat pulldown is useless exercise, due to a lot of reasons (potentially dangerous, with nothing to provide you in return )
overhead triceup extentions - useless, waste of time.  i have never seen someone do it with proper form (i dont even know what the proper form for this exercise is )

[Richard]

I use the BTN DB tricep extension to strengthen my overhead press strength. It is a good movement. It's superior for that purpose to something like the laying skullcrusher because you're standing, and superior to the cable tricep extensions because it more effectively recruits the long head and you're also standing unsupported by some cable machine during the movement.

Why not Close grip bench?

My chest fatigues particularly fast, and I am also in a caloric deficit so I don't always have the power/endurance to punch through exercises, so I can't always do CGB after incline pressing, which is my primary chest developer.

Why not do dips?

I can't do a single body weight dip due to my weight and I find the "dip machine" to be useless at best.

[Simple Simon]

No exercise is dangerous unless performed with very bad form in combination with big weights

With all due respect, I disagree. I believe there are exercises that are dangerous, no matter how correctly they are performed.

Obviously we all have structural differences, so not everyone who performs movements such as curl grip rows or overhead tricep extensions will injure themselves. But I still maintain there are movements that are inherently dangerous and should not be performed by the vast majority of people.

[wop]

What about upright rows? This exercise has a pretty bad reputation.

[Simple Simon]

^ Yes, I read that narrow grip upright rows place too much stress on the shoulders, and stopped doing them. But I have to admit, they never used to give me any issues.

Funnily, I have a damaged elbow due to the movements I initially mentioned, and there are a whole range of movements I cannot do due to it. One of those is upright rows.