6 Pointless Exercises that are Wasting Your Time

With time being at a premium nowadays you need to cut out the fluff from your workout and pick exercises that are going to produce the results that you want with the time that you have at your disposal.

Here are 6 exercises that you can cut out of your programme straight away to make room for exercises that will produce top results.

Tricep Kickbacks

Tricep kickbacks are often a go-to exercise to “tone your bingo wings”. Now, tone means build muscle (a whole different story that would require a separate blog), but kickbacks don’t lend themselves to building muscle. They don’t put your triceps under tension for much time at all doing the movement and you cannot use much weight at all due to the nature of the exercise.

Getting good at push ups would be a much better use of time.

Decline Bench Press

Using a decline bench to target your lower pecs is pretty much useless unless you are very lean and are a competitive bodybuilder. The shape of your pec is largely genetic.

You’re better off getting strong on a flat bench and losing some body fat than doing this move.

Calf Raises

Unless your goal is to strengthen the muscle and tendons surrounding the calf than in my personal opinion calves need a lot more volume than 3 sets of 10-15 reps once a week.

Using a jump rope and skipping for 5 minutes as part of your warm up is a good way to get some high volume calf work in.

Direct Forearm Work

The best way to get jacked forearms? Get a strong grip!

Instead of doing wrist curls get strong in the deadlift, chin up and farmers carry.

10 Different Variations Of Bicep and Tricep Exercises

Prioritise pushing and pulling movements like chin ups, bench press, military press, bent over rows and dips.

These will target a greater amount of muscle fibres and ultimately lead to better results. If bigger arms are a specific goal of yours then you are going to need some direct arm work, but it should be the icing on the cake at the end of the session. It has been suggested that you need to gain between 10-20lbs of lean muscle if you’re looking to add an inch to your arms, so compound exercises should be the focus.

Donky Kicks

Much the same as the tricep kickbacks I am afraid girls. If you’re looking to change the shape of your glutes then pick an exercise that puts them under tension for a longer period of time and that you can load with a decent amount of weight. Squats and lunges are much better options; your lower back will also thank you for it.

We cover all of the training basics in our Gyms and provide you with a tailored training programme to help you achieve the goals and results that matter to you.

If you have any questions on the above or would like some advice on how we could help you with your fitness goal, don’t hesitate, visit our gyms in London and try one of our small group personal training sessions.

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