I always want to just go up and smack some people and tell them they're going to seriously hurt themselves if they keep doing what they're doing.

Like the guy at my gym who's convinced he needs to be bouncing his ass off the seat when doing lat pulldowns. Or the people who swing their entire body when doing curls. Or the people who bounce the bar off their chest when bench pressing.

Screw etiquette, shouldn't someone say something to these people before they hurt themselves and/or damage gym equipment? (i.e.; slamming plates down because they can't control the weight)

 

Well see, me.. Id rather see them hurt themselves and have a good laugh about it.

But ive been told im evil too.

I was wearing my mp3 player and doing cardio, watching this guy bounce the bar off his chest, at an angle no less with his back all arched.

I thought i was laughing quietly to myself, but i must have had my music too loud, cause he gave me an evil glare.

 

Quit being a bitch, I did that last week. Decided I would be a big man and do a 4th set...yeah on number 9 couldnt get that shit off my chest. Shit happens and no one is judging you. Everytime I see a weak person I just think how in shape they are going to be in no time then with people like me who are pretty strong I always end up seeing some guy who weighs half as much as me who puts up twice as much weight. Quit being a pussy and go back to freeweights. I was benching maybe 185 4 or 5 times 2 months ago and now I am doing 225 seven times. Trust me it gets a lot better.

 

theres this kid who arches his back every time he would do a rep on the bench. I swear at one point it was a perfect U. I was going to go over and kick him in the balls and tell him to stop it but I decided not too.

 

Again, can any of you explain why bouncing the bar off of any part of their body with any exercise, is...bad ?

ANyone wonna take a stab at it?

 

Man...

I dont know what you mean by the first sentence there, it does sound inappropriate though, but the last two....why is it bad? Can you explain to me why swinging your body on curls and bouncing the bar off your chest is bad?

I mean, you're all saying it with such certainty, you must have a very good explanation for it that even I would understand (cos if I do, all will).

 

If this guys's goal is to be a power lifter why would you even doubt that what he is doing is wrong?

I think what's wrong with many of you is that you assume that there is only ONE correct way to lift weights and everyone else has the same goals you do.

Let me give you a primer on different types of goals:

1. Rehabilitation
2. Conditioning
3 Strength
4. Power-building
5. Speed
6. Power-lifting
7. Others (even ones you can make up which will not be wrong or inappropriate)

All of the above will require DIFFERENT TYPES of weight lifting techniques, program-following, frequency of being present at the gym, recovery schedules, different rep count, different set count and I can go outside the gym and mention nutrition, etc.

Wise up and dont assume others dont know what they're doing. Most dont, but certain people know exactly what they're doing and why and just because it's not how you lift, it does not mean it's wrong.

I see the grin-faces the Sylvia mentioned she had when I am in my power-building sessions at the gym. Everyone thinks I'm crazy when I do jerks, cleans and specific vball weighted plyometric exercises that look crazy to someone who knows of one way of lifting (and that's usually the strength way).

 

Hence the reason I say nothing about anyones form in the gym...
End up with a foot in my mouth

But really...is curving your back while benching ever good? I see plenty of powerlifters and they never do that shit.

 

1) You can hurt yourself with just the bar bouncing off of you. A guy at a g ym i went to a few years ago broke a few ribs bouncing on the bench press.

2) You're not taking full advantage of the lift. Your muscles are not moving the weight for the full range of motion. The bench press isn't meant to exercise the elasticity in your rib cage.

 

As for the curl, I can understand a little sway during a curl, but I'm talking about the guy who's gotta turn his whole body in an arc just to get the dumbbell up.

The people I'm talking about aren't the ones doing it for a specific reason - they typically look like the type of people who just started working out and are too embarassed to be seen lifting anything that looks too small.

 

Im over it...

 

you want to get the full work out of every muscle fiber, and when you bounce it, you lose the muscle used in the first couple of inches of the press. if done too 'enthusiastically' you can easily crack your ribcage and pull muscles from the quick downward movement on the shoulders. the key is to control the downward movement, stop at 0, then return to the extended position to make sure that momentum plays no part in helping you lift (its not that bad excluding the chest breaking part, but youll get fewer results, since fewer muscle fibers are worked). just think of many real life things...rapid changes are the worst thing for any system...tennis elbow, twisted ankles, tendonitis...they mostly come from rapid changes in forces that the body cant handle.

as for arching the back, you can chip your vertebrae by forcing one end up (legs pushing) and the other down (the weight pushing you down). your spine isnt normally supposed to bend in the direction it does when some people force it up on a bench, so the bones rub and such...plus you lose the use of serratus and other muscles when benching, so you get less of a workout. lower back muscles are very easy to pull, which is why some exercises/jobs are easier with belts to stabilize the small muscles and keep the spine area tight and tensed. by arching, you lose this ability and have no core stability. with more than half of your body off the bench, you also lose balance and with heavy weights, you can easily drop something/fall. the main reason for pushing the butt/lower back up is to cheat on a bench and rotate the chest so the larger muscles (think decline presses) are used, making it seem as if the person is stronger...but everyone can decline more than flat.

for curls and other exercises that you are not directly putting the weight on yourself, you can 'cheat' and it is actually helpful sometimes. after a few sets of preacher curls, you cant really do anymore biceps work. if you 'cheat' by swaying your body and using your back to do some barbell curls, you dont work your biceps fully, but you still work them more than you would if you just gave up after preachers.

 

it wouldnt let me edit anymore, so here goes:

try to do a dip with your legs fully extended, then do one with your legs crossed and bent at the knee behind you. which is easier by rotating your body a bit with your leg position, you make use of proportionally bigger/stronger muscles, so dipping becomes easier.


think of this when you bench (the vertical bar is your arm, like a side view of someone benching):

normal body position (90 degree bar/chest angle):

.____|o
/

arched back position (<90 degree bar/chest):
..__
./....\|o
/


ignore the periods, they are just place holders since spaces are canceled

the text pics suck, but you can see that you mimic a decline by arching your back up to use larger muscles, hence making you think you are stronger than you really are. if you were to try to flex your midsection the other way and sit up partially, you would lift even less, because you would mimic an incline.

 

your art skills are wonderfuL!

 

BTW I am just fucking with you when I call you a bitch and a pussy, don't take it serious.

 

Whew...Ill put the razor blade and noose away now.....

 

Here is the answer to your question

 

1. You can hurt yourself in myriads of different ways at the gym, even when you're not lifting.

2. Braking ribs because of bouncing, sounds, at the least, super extreme. I am not trying to say that bouncing the bar during ANY exercise is safe.

3. But then even if you were right that bouncing the bar during an exercise were significantly more dangerous from an injury perspective, what about power-building lifting? If you know anything about that type of lifting, it's all about bouncing and more. It's all about explosive, weighted lifting. My point is, at the least, to be be closer to being accurate, one should say "I was watching this guy bouncing the bar off his chese the other day at the gym who told me that HIS GOAL WAS STRENGH AND MUSCLE GAIN and was lauging inside". Or something to that.

Do you see how different that is?

Yes they are. Yes my muscles "move the weight for the full range of motion". How did the bar move upwards from the point it bounced off my chest?

Momentum? Absolutely but the distance/ROM from the "top dead center" to use engine lingo, to the point it hits my chest is so small, very little momentum is built.

Rib cage elasticity? Some of it, but for significant amounts of upwards momentum to be built because say...225 pounds of weight hit my rib cage is exremely unlikely due to physics. Your rib cage will break first, before it builds enough momentum to actually make a big difference.

Here is what happens when the lifter is explosive at the area around the BDC (bottom dead center - that would when the bar hits your chest):

Elastic energy is stored in your muscles and especially tendons! Hence the better results in bench pressing performance. This is a huge find that, what I call "athletic engineers" and biomechanics experts, have been looking for, for decades. And they found it when they studied why the hell an athlete can jump higher when he falls off of a box, than if he just jumped starting from a stand still. Same thing with the so called "bouncing barbell" in a bench press type of situation.

Now combine that with the absolute fact (this is also pretty new) that when an athlete (whose primary goals are strength and muslce building) is explosive around the time and area where the bar changes direction (which is again the time when the bar is close to your rib cage in our topic) and you have a situation where being explosive around the time when eccentric motion ends and the concentric motion starts, is almost always beneficial no matter what the athlete's goals.

The "you might get injured" argument, sounds to me as valid as "deadlifts and squats will break your back" if you know what I mean.

 

The couple of things that can be said (and while still remaning accurate) about a significant swing while curling are:

1. ...that it's a more compound and some might even call it a different, exercise. Think about it. Now, I am engaging more muscles into a possibly new exercise and hence I can lift more weight.

2. That a significant swing makes the exercise more of a power building exercise than when you curl without the swing. So now the exercise has different goals for the athlete, hence it's now a different exercise.

FOR SURE though (and that's my main point) it is NOT a "no-no" exercise.

Finally, when I curl with a bar, even when the goal is to add muscle, I do swing. At the end. I spot myself. What's wrong with that?

You guys need to think a little more open minded and you can do that only when you understand why certain things are done the way they are. Instead of only learning what needs to be done without wondering the reasons it's taught a certain way.

I mean most people ask themselves if they can trust the source of info. Many times a magazine is good enough of a source for someone, or a book, or a...big guy at the gym. What I do is challenge the source. If the source cannot explain a given claim in a way that makes sense to me, based on the principles I have learned, then I put that info in the "pending" box. If it makes sense, then I remember it. But I always ask, WHY is that so? I bet if you ask 10 big guys at the gym about why they are doing the things they are, 9 or all of them will not have good enough explanations that will make sense to (even) someone like me.

 

I assume that my above posts cover all of the above you wrote.

Just to add that, if you understand what momentum is, then you will understand that what you're saying above is impossible. When there is a downward movement of anything and that movement changes to exactly the opposite way, there will be some momentum no matter what. What you're trying to say is to have a much control over the weight as possible at the point it changes direction.

The guy that broke his ribcage had TOO much momentum. It's not that you have zero and he has momentum.

Again, just to be accurate.

Absolutely. It's called POWER. Weight times the time it took for that weight to be moved from point A to point B.

What does that mean though? What are you trying to say? That there is no such thing as...say plyometric exercises, or that there is no such thing as power building? Or that there is no such thing as shot put throwing, javelin throwing, olympic lifting?

The accurate statement is this: An athlete can get injured at any point in time. Even when sitting. But when an athlete is executing on an explosive motion, his/her chances of injury raise.

But so what?...is what I ask. If my goals as an athlete is to improve on my vertical leap, all the worlds squats with close to zero momentum and any other exercises that you can think of that has strength as its intended result, wont do much good. It will do some but it wont as much as if I added plyometrics and power-building exercises.

What you're saying above and what all of you that think that weighted explosiveness is a thing to laugh at, is that one cannot and should not have expectations of improving on their throw (whatever and however they're throwing), their running speed, their vertical leap, you name it. Absolutely rediculous the above is, no doubt. Now that I have disected it, it does sound crazy and I am sure that's not what you're trying to say. It's just that as I said in a previous post, you all assume that there is ONE way of lifting weights and there is ONE goal. And if it's different than yours, then it's wrong. Not so. Not even by a long stretch.


Again, you might have missed my explanation of why and when is beneficial. Here it is:

https://acurazine.com/forums/showthr...12#post4393912

Finally, have you seen gymnastics athletes and what they do when they perform? I am sure you'd agree that many things they do, are not supposed to be done. Yet they are.

I mean the same can be said about any athlete. You're not supposed to be able to squat 600 pounds, surely you agree. You're not supposed to be able to throw a weight as heavy as the shot put 20 meters away, etc, etc. It's called being an athlete and performing in the midst of exreme competition. That's what sports is all about.

Now granted safety above all and there are many things we know work for us when it comes down to keeping injury free, but not swinging while curling is not one. Not been explosive with the appropriate amount of weight is not one either and in the game of powerlifting, not arching your back is also not one.


Actually on the contrary. Lower back muscles are one of the strongest and most powerful muscles we humans have. Those that pull them did something stupid or left them get weak for a prolonged period of time and got into some type of lifting or exercise situation without warming up or acclimating that hurt them.

There are more inherent issues with our hard parts of our back, I mean bones, ligaments, etc. than our muslces. And those issues are part of the price we are still paying for being erect believe it or not. The evolution of our lower and upper spine, etc is still ongoing. We're still raising is what the evidence shows. One of the reasons we get taller as the generations pass.



Again. For athletes whose goal is to add muscle as soon as possible then ROM is paramount importance which makes the arching of the back a no-no. But that is one goal of possible many.

A! There you go. Now we're on the same page.

 

free weights are what i use before i go to bed.... seems lik right after i take a shower, im energetic to lift weights.... BTW doing 20 pounds on each arm, bout 40 times each until bed

the power is in my bicep but dosnt look it.... any ideas???

 

Wait for puberty

 

This doesn't change the fact that bad form is dangerous.

Yeah, this dude was pretty crazy. He'd get a rythm going with the bouncing and i guess that day he let the bar fall too hard on one rep.

Bouncing the bar is NOT acceptable ANYWHERE. Here's a vid of a 900lb benchpress. http://www.criticalbench.com/gene900.wmv. Here's an 800lb bench: http://www.criticalbench.com/Ryan800.mpeg. No bouncing. Powerlifting is about explosive muscle strength, sure, but there's no cheating.

I think what you're getting at is "different form is not necessarily bad form." This is true. I don't see how bouncing a bar off of your chest helps you towards any goal, unless you want to look stronger than you really are.

I'm not going to split hairs about this. If you bounce the bar off your chest you are not utilizing your muscle fibers to their full capacity, and are therefore cheating them out of the maximum possible gains.

The bounce is a cheat. It helps you put up more weight than you could do with the muscles targeted/used by the bench press alone. Your muscles aren't doing all of the work.

The change in direction is not the problem. It's using your ribs to give the bar an extra boost that is.

You can suffer injurty through the deadlift and squat with poor form just like you can the bench. Barring an unusual medical condition: proper form, no problems.

 

High metabolism, not eating enough, not sleeping enough to rebuild, using very bad form and not really using your bicep? You're also very young, so it's nothing to worry about now, give yourself a couple years.

 

it is momentum... m*v

your chest acts as a spring and stores energy, then when it expands outward again, the stored energy is pushed up into the bar, creating velocity and therefore upward momentum . but, your chest ISNT supposed to act like a spring...

you can arch your back all you want, but by doing so you are not truly flat bench pressing. i doubt you are a powerlifter, so arching your back for that little advantage doesnt really do much except give you a way to injure yourself

where do you get the 'facts' that the back muscles are not easy to hurt you have an abdominal muscle that wraps around you like a belt, but that is not a lower back muscle...your lower back is designed to help you stand upright, not lift much/be stressed heavily

lifting 600 pounds is possible through practice. bending your joints in ways that stresses them can be done too. these are different situations. in one you have the potential to get to a point of performance, and in the other you are doing something that no practice can help. its proven that judo hurts your knees for example; the joints moving in ways that are unnatural weakens them. world class judo athletes (like my olympic gold medal coach at cal) are the fittest of fit, and he has knee troubles at 35

we are all 'normal' people. none (maybe 1 or 2 on acl) have the potential/talent/body to be powerlifters, so giving advice geared toward lifting a maximum amount by shortcutting wont help any of us. 315 is nothing compared to powerlifter weights, yet it is considered a lot by most people. so defending advice that will help you rep 455 as opposed to 450 is impractical.

and as for explosive squats/plyometrics. you are not changing from a -vector to an opposite vector. you are changing from zero and accelerating in one direction, so the forces arent as great. your body is expecting to jump upward from solid ground. try jumping off of something and as soon as your legs compress, jump as high as you can and as powerfully as you can...it wont be pleasant after a couple of tries. sure you can do it, but its much nicer on the body if you do things without shocking. or better yet...take a heavy dumbell and try to do a full extension curl by bouncing the weight off of your locked elbow...it doesnt work too well


btw arnold>* and he said arching your back/bouncing (in addition to pretty much every world class body builder in his book) is just inviting trouble...i think ill stick with what he and tons of others say




giving advice for extreme situations isnt very helpful, and might get some weaker individuals without much practice in the gym into some trouble down the road.

 

Of course it does not. The issue is, WHAT IS BAD FORM. Bad form cannot be defined without clearly defining the GOAL/S of a given athlete. That's what you keep missing (above and even below), even after my posts above. Again, there is not ONE way of doing any exercise. The way can vary just solely depandand on the goals. More below...

You misunderstood me. I am not trying to defend that bouncing the bar is acceptable. If you're gonna bounce the bar on your chest to the point where you break your ribs them of course it's not acceptable unless if your goals were to break your ribs.

Being EXPLOSIVE around the time and point where the eccentric becomes concentric, can be totally acceptable though if the goals are of a specific type. That may loook like chest bouncing to someone who only accepts the...let me called it for reasons of simplicity...super-controlled way of lifting weights.

BTW, about the discussions about back arching before. Do you see what powerlifters do? As I mentioned arching your back in powerlifting of bench pressing is of paramount importance. They actually do a lot of different exercises to improve on that including stretching exercises.


Hey you asked or mentioned something above and I answered it. Your statement required a splitting-hairs type of an answer.

OK obviously I am misunderstood once again. Let me speak about the bottom line here. Here is the correct way:

Again you're missing the goal factor. The above is mostly correct only if an athlete's goal is to grow muscle. In that case, you must make sure that the weight is moving in a controlled manner, but once you finish the stretching of the muscle and ready to shorten it, explosive manner of shortening the muscle has been proven to help in muscle growth.

If the athlete's goal is power for example, then the nature of the movement of the weight and the weight itself will be very different.

If the athlete's goal is conditioning then the weight will be different and the movement will replicate the muscle-growth movement without the explosive part.

Etc.

Again you're saying something that's not wrong nor right. Why? Because you dont mention THE ATHLETE's GOAL in your sentence. Because if power-building is what I am trying to achieve, at 50% of overload, I can bounce the bar (to an extend far from breaking my ribs) and still be doing the right thing.


No doubt. Proper form is very important. BUT! Form of a given exercise can significantly change solely because the goal/s did.

 

This discussion is not about me. I am no powerlifter, but other are. Arching their back during bench pressive is an absolute MUST! It's like saying you cant rotate around yourself when thowing the shotput. Rediculous of course.

See the videos the ABreece has posted above. Look at the 900 pound guy. He is actually acclimating the arch before the lift. Per proper form for powerlifting.

Finally, if the advantage an arched back gave a powerlifter were little, they would not be striving to increase it. The more a powerlifter can arch their back, the more successful they will be in their sport. Look at the ROM gained from arching.

Where do you get that they are?

There is no evidence that I know of that erectors are hurt easier than any other muscle. There certainly is evidence that back related bones and ligaments get worn easier than other though. Same with knees. I explained the main reasons why.

Then no muclse is "designed to be stressed heavily". Can you justify why what you wrote above is so?

I dont know which part of my arguments is related to the above, so I cant comment on this, because it's wrong and right depending on where you base it on.

This also sounds like "dont do squats and deadlift, they are bad - why? I dont know"

No sport hurts anything if done correctly. People hurt people, not sports. One of the basic rules of sports.


Just out of curiousity, which movement in Judo is unnatural to the joints?

That does not mean that it's Judo that's to fault. It's rediculous to blame a sport for an injury of an athlete.

We can talk about what injures athletes and what measured can be taken to prevent injuries, but a sport cannot be blamed for injuries.

I dont know what you're trying to say here.

If that athlete is a powerlifter it's not impractical at all! It may mean the difference between a medal or no medal. Or whatever award is given that day.

This is absolutely 100% incorrect. Obviously you have no heard of the "stretch-shortening cycle" which is the absolute definition of a plyometric exercise.

I even exlpained a big part of it in the post/s you're replying back to. When a jumper leaps up when falling from a box (say about 20 inches off the ground), he leaps higher than when he starts from a standstill. And I explained why that's happening.

If that's not change of vectors, then what is?

I dont know what you mean by "nicer to the body". It's also nicer to the body to lift for maintenance. Never strive to improve. Reach 75% of effort and stop.

A lot of things are nicer to the body, but we're talking about Health and Fitness here, we're talking about ATHLETES, which comes from the Greek word ATHLOS which means achievement. It would be no achievement to not try to jump higher. And if you want to jump higher, you have to fall hard, due to what I wrote above.


Man, whose post did you read? Of course Arnold is correct by saying that. That's because HIS GOAL was to muscle growth, not playing volleyball, or prepping for the 100 meters run or powerlifting anything.

Does the term GOAL mean anything to anyone here folks?

That's exactly what I'm also trying to say...

 

I think the ones that swing their back when they do bicep curls are the worst.

they always look damn funny too.

Actually, the worst, are the ones that use up the machines that you need, but you ask them how many sets they have left, and they tell you maybe 15 or 20.. cause they're doing such low weight the workout is useless.

 

By the way, weight gloves are the shizzle!!!! I found that out today.

 

I don't disagree. As I said, different' form != bad form.


That is perfectly fine.

You refuted the unimportant part of what I said by hair splitting.

Again i don't disagree. Different form != bad form.

Unless your definition of bouncing is different from mine, bouncing is never right. A controlled explosive "up" after a down is not a bounce.

Again, i don't disagree.

 

gavriil / ABreece - I need to make a sugestion here. Maybe you guys can argue your points behind closed doors (PM, Mod Forum?). I only say this because it's a lot for us noobs to take in. Maybe the two of you can put something together that you agree on and publish it?

Just a suggestion.