Question: What are the SAFEST Strength Training Exercises? | 20% Fitness
Channel: Mike Ying - 20% Fitness - Henselmans Certified PT
Date: 2021-01-29

Prevent your injuries from happening

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Question: What are the SAFEST Strength Training Exercises?

Select exercises with more stress on your muscles and less on your connective tissue

Avoid exercises that involves pushing behind your back
Avoid behind-the-neck exercises
Avoid spinal loading + moving the spine. If you have spinal loading, keep the spine fixed.
Exercises that have greater freedom of movement are generally less injurious and barbell exercises generally have more injury risk. Some machines with good range of motion and good resistance curve are also good for injury prevention.
Closed chain exercises are generally better than open chain exercises
Examples: push-up - bench press, unilateral squat - back squat, Arnold press - barbell overhead press, one-legged deadlift - deadlift, ring pull-up - bar pull-up

More injury risk with

High training intensity
Explosive tempo
Overuse by repetition (but intensity is more important)

The best way to decrease injury risk is:

Getting strong and muscular

The best way to recover from an injury is:

Active recovery: strength training as much as your injury allows it. (Exercising helps a lot more for recovery than resting and doing nothing.)

Some things that can help a tiny bit: compression sleeves (not too tight), heat therapy, and massage

To avoid elbow pain

Wrist aligned with elbow
Hold the bar firmly
Exercises with free wrist rotation like ring and dumbbell exercises
An elbow sleeve can help (make sure it’s not too tight)

If you have tennis elbow

Careful with pulling exercises:

Choose exercises that are not hard (not much resistance) when the elbow is fully extended (Example: switch to concentration curl from Bayesian curl)
Pulling exercises with less biceps recruitment are easier on the elbows
Pronated grip better than supinated (Example: switch to pull-up from chin-up)
Wide-grip is easier on the tennis elbow than close-grip (Example: switch to wide-grip pull-up from close-grip pull-up)
Thumbless grip can help

If you have golfer’s elbow

Careful with pushing exercises:

Choose exercises that are not hard (not much resistance) near lock-out
Pushing exercises with less triceps recruitment are easier on the elbows
For free-weight exercises: keep forearms vertical
For barbell exercises: a wider grip tends to be easier on the elbows
Cable chest press and convergent chest press machines can be good exercises

To avoid shoulder impingement

Retract scapula and have good form when bench pressing
Avoid internal rotation of the shoulders with shoulder abduction
Avoid behind-the-neck exercises
Narrow (close) grip is better
The Arnold press is the safest overhead press for the shoulders

To avoid back pain

Have a strong erector spinae
Exercises with less spinal loading are friendlier on the back
Pushing out the knees externally during squat can help
More back injury risk in the morning than later (so you can train later in the day for less back injury risk)

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