Contraindicated Exercise

Contraindicated Exercise is one of the most over-used terms leading to a lot of misconstrued information in the fitness industry. In reality, there are very few exercises that are truly too high risk to perform. Rather the contention is caused by people incorrectly performing exercises, biomechanical defeciencies, and chronic diseases that creates the greatest risk of performing most exercises. But the epidemic decline of good health in the U.S. has prompted many industry authorities in the fitness & health field to label a number of valid exercises as contraindicated. This is often done under the pretense that if there is a significant number of persons that can't properly perform an exercise without pain, than it should be scraped. A perpetuated example of this line of thinking is communicated by trainers who routinely tell their clients that sit-ups are bad for their back, and performing abdominal crunches should be opted for instead. How much sense does this make when the human body is clearly well designed to perform hip flexion movement? The reasoning for this poor advice stems from the knowledge that many people experience lower back pain while attempting to perform sit-ups. But what these trainers fail to realize is that the exercise in of itself is not bad. More times than not; the result of lower back pain is simply exsposing the fact those afflicted participants performing the sit-up exercise have weak lower back muscles, tight hamstrings, poor core conditioning, and or a skeletal, nuerological, or muscular injuries.

Understandably, it is humanistic yet erroneous to assume that if a person gets hurt while excuting a particular exercise, than the exercise is bad. Though past injuries are a good predictor of future injuries; a different person performing the same exercise under different circumstances could successfully complete the movement without injury, and derive benefits from the exercise.

The human body not only thrives, but needs healthy amounts of applied physical stress in all full range planes of motion to survive well. Therefore, very few exercise movements are dangerous and out of bounds. The most inherent risk of exercises comes from contraindicated people attempting to execute them.