11 Exercises That Are a Waste of Time for Beginners — and What to Do Instead

Explosive plyometric box jumps and lifting a fully loaded barbell above your head may be impressive, but those exercises aren't for everyone — especially beginners. Lack of strength, flexibility and experience can quickly turn athletic bravado into a visit to the emergency room.

In fact, there are a number of moves that the best trainers generally refuse to do themselves and recommend that their clients don't do either. Here's a rundown of the exercises that beginners are better off saving for later or skipping altogether, plus what to do instead to achieve your fitness goals.

This one lands on nearly every "don't do" list, but it's an especially important exercise to avoid as you age, says Irv Rubenstein, PhD, exercise physiologist and founder of STEPS Fitness in Nashville, Tennessee. That's primarily because pulling a bar down behind your neck causes excessive shoulder rotation.

The move can be hard on anyone's shoulders, but it's especially dangerous over age 40 and even more so after 60, when rotator cuff problems often lie beneath the surface waiting to emerge, Rubenstein says.

"Do pulldowns to the front, stopping at your upper sternum below your collarbone," Rubenstein says.

Pushing a bar up by rotating your shoulders and lifting it behind your neck tweaks your shoulder joint similarly to behind-the-neck pulldowns. But it's even worse, Rubenstein says, because your rotator cuff and shoulder is now loaded with weight.

That puts more pressure on a potentially poorly positioned joint, and someone new to exercise usually doesn't have the strength, mobility or knowledge of proper form to support the bar in this position.

Use dumbbells or a bar in front of your body, pushing off from the level of the collarbone in front of the shoulders, Rubenstein suggests.

Rubenstein also recommends that beginners avoid stiff-leg deadlifts, in which you bend forward at your hips while holding a barbell. Locked-out knees while bending forward with a heavy weight creates elevated stress on your spine, Rubenstein says. And again, proper form can be difficult for new exercisers to nail, especially with a heavy barbell to lift.

"Furthermore, when the hips flex to whatever angle the hamstrings allow, the spine will start to flex if you try to go further, which could lead to a number of spine and disc problems," he says.

Rubenstein does a Romanian deadlift, which allows greater hip flexion before your spine is compromised. Beginners will also benefit from starting with dumbbells rather than a barbell.

Miami fitness pro Jessica Smith, CPT, creator of the Walk On: Strength & Balance program, has sworn off weighted torso twists for herself and clients.

"You can do these via a machine at the gym or using a barbell over the shoulders. But any way you try them, adding that much extra weight to the spine during a rotational movement is terribly unsafe," Smith says.

Work your obliques with bicycle crunches. According to the American Council on Exercise (ACE), it's one of the best options to target the sides of your abdominals.

Sports performance specialist and kinesiologist Paul Juris, EdD, says he'd never squat on a BOSU ball— and says beginners shouldn't either. If you're not familiar with the device, it's basically half of a stability ball attached to a solid (usually plastic) platform.

For one, squatting on unstable surfaces such as a BOSU ball decreases force output and therefore doesn't allow for maximum strength gains, according to an April 2017 study in the ‌Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine‌.

"We often witness almost uncontrolled shaking when watching people perform this task," Juris says. "This is frequently attributed to muscle imbalances or even a lack of core strength. In reality, it is neither."

The exercise creates a conflicting state. "Muscles responsible for controlling the movement work, while those that don't contribute to the execution of smooth and fluid movement will either work at significantly lower levels or not at all."

Keep squats on stable ground to avoid the confusion.

Using a stability ball as a substitute for an exercise bench for a heavy lift isn't something you'll catch Jamie Walker, CPT, doing. The NASM-certified personal trainer and Yoga Alliance-certified yoga teacher cites too high of an injury risk.

"People in favor of lifting on stability balls say that the uneven balance helps build strength in your stabilizer muscles and further enhances your lift," Walker says. "In reality, however, you're much more likely to injure yourself while lifting on a stability ball. One quick spill and you could be out of the gym for months."

Stick with a flat or incline weight bench and leave fitness balls for other exercises.

The name makes this triceps move sound more dangerous than it is, but lowering and raising a bar over your head while lying on your back could cause unnecessary stress and inflammation in the elbow joint, Walker says.

"I stay away from these, although they're fairly commonplace in most gyms." The goal of skullcrushers is to increase the size and strength of the triceps muscle group, but the exercise can cause a ton of stress on your elbow."

Stick with triceps pushdowns or other, lower-risk triceps moves.

Pressing out with your legs against a heavy object while in a seated position can compromise the health and overall compression of your spine, Walker says. "Many experts believe this exercise creates an unnatural stress on the lower back. I'd avoid it."

Walker recommends sticking with proven lower-body builders like squats. "Ditch the machines and let the free weights do the work," he says.

Doing leg raises — lying on your back with straight legs and raising them up and down six inches — is a dangerous way to work your lower abs due to the amount of force on your lower back, says Connecticut-based exercise physiologist Tom Holland, CSCS.

Try this supine leg extension ab exercise.

Plyometric exercises such as box jumps require a solid strength foundation before attempting them, Holland says. Doing plyo without adequate strength, balance, speed and correct technique can easily result in injury.

The National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) suggests attempting lower-body plyometrics, such as box jumps, only after you're able to perform five reps of a squat using 60 percent of your own body weight in 5 seconds or less.

If you do try box jumps, though, Holland recommends jumping up but stepping down.

Step-ups are a safer alternative to box jumps that work the same muscles.

Although pull-ups are a great upper-body exercise, people tend to strain their necks or backs too much trying to get over the bar, says Olympic medalist and pro soccer player Lauren Sesselmann, creator of the Fit As A Pro workout series.

Sometimes, pull-ups can cause you to work the muscles unevenly because one arm may be stronger than the other, she says. "So that arm is pulling more than the other and you can injure yourself."

Sesselmann recommends doing them on an assisted machine or using a resistance band. Or, skip the bar altogether and stick with some of the many other exercises similar to pull-ups that work the same muscles.