Consistency in exercise is crucial, but it’s equally important to focus on proper form and avoid movements that cause pain. If an exercise leads to discomfort in your joints, such as the shoulders or wrists, it’s essential to stop and evaluate whether posture or biomechanics are the underlying issues. Even habits like looking down at a laptop for long periods can cause muscle strain and impact your workouts. Adjusting your approach can prevent further damage and improve long-term results.

Certain exercises, like the barbell bench press, can cause joint problems due to restricted movement, especially in the shoulders. To avoid long-term issues such as joint replacements or surgeries, it’s critical to focus on exercises that are biomechanically suited to your body. Consistency is valuable, but consistently damaging your joints will lead to setbacks. Stick to movements that don’t cause pain and enhance both muscle and core strength for safer, more effective workouts.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:04 – Consistency and Proper Form

01:32 – Pain During Exercise

03:04 – Laptop Posture Issues

05:40 – Bench Press Warning

09:48 – Avoid Joint Damage

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] So I was talking to a patient the other day. Now. I have said over and over again about consistency, and that’s the things I want to clarify something. The way that you build a muscle is that you hit it properly over and over and over and over and over again. So most of the time when you find the right exercise for the right muscle, you’re not going to change the reason you will change your exercises. Is it because really and truly because you’ve got to hit the muscle and 17,000 different ways or else it won’t grow? It’s because people get bored and I don’t know what to tell you about that. I focus on my reps. I focus on my perfection of my form every time. And if you’re if you’re using the right weight, your form is going to need to be focused on every single time. So that’s how I keep my attention. Where it’s supposed to be is I’m super dedicated to my form again to prevent injuries. Having said that. If you’re doing an exercise and it hurts every time you do it, stop doing that exercise. I don’t care if it’s what everybody else is doing for their muscle group that’s, you know, standing high flies and it hurts your shoulders. Don’t do that one. I want to make sure that, you know, just because I said sending high fliers is great, which it is, It’s a fantastic exercise. If it makes your shoulders hurt, stop doing it. Do something different.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:32] If you’re working out and a specific exercise never really hurt your shoulders, your elbows, your wrists, whatever, go have someone look at your joints. And then maybe you discontinue the exercise then. Because after you’ve developed, you know, specific muscle patterns and specific, you know, muscle tone issues, yeah, you could have issues. So, for instance, one of the big ones I see is that people stare down at laptops or a monitor that’s too low all the time, giving them neck jaw teeth, upper back shoulder issues all the time. Like I see this literally 3 or 4 times a day. People come in there like, Doc, I don’t know, I get all these headaches, doc. I don’t know. My shoulders hurt. I kind of know am my, you know, my. I’m so tense. I don’t want my jaws messed up and like, where’s your eye? Or do you use a laptop all day long? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m on the computer eight hours, maybe ten hours a day. Yeah. So you’re looking down a lot. And so the muscles in the back of your neck and head have to, like, latch onto that stuff and hold it really tight. Yeah. And so the muscles that have to be really tight to hold your head are tight. Yeah. And that’s a problem. Yeah. Now your shoulders hurt, so you can’t just in the exercise you’re doing. Okay. So that’s kind of how that goes. Right. So maybe it’s not that the exercise you’re doing is necessarily the wrong exercise, perhaps the exercise that you don’t even think about that sitting and staring at a laptop all day long, that isotonic isometric exercise holding your head like this all day long is doing damage to your body that you didn’t even know about. That’s usually what we say.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:04] And so the exercises that I’m telling people to do, the upright rows, you know, the upper upper cross, lower cross flies, that type of stuff is now inhibited because of the way that you stand your actual posture due to the exercise that you didn’t even think you were doing, which is staring at a laptop. So we’ve got to kind of take into account everything that’s going on. However, that’s a totally different topic. If you’re doing an exercise and for some reason all of a sudden it starts hurting, go get it checked on. Go have somebody who knows biomechanics, who knows exercise, who knows what they’re doing. Take a look at it. You know, trainers are not a bad option. A really good biomechanical sports doc would be great. You know, and this is the author, two guys earlier this year with the insurgents, like you can trust your medical guys on this one. This is a pretty solid deal. Biomechanics is something that they all know. Now, here’s a problem with your surgeons. And I love my surgeons. Like, I will talk about how great surgery is and how mystifying it is to me all day long. It’s amazing. Truly, truly just amazing. Miracle workers. I just have lots of amazing things to say about surgeons. Not a lot of them are hardcore athletes, so that that becomes problematic. Like when I always tell people an athlete should never seen a non-athlete doctor, You’re going to get into that because there’s so many times that I get people who are like, I’m like, Why are you here? Like my orthopedic surgeon told me I couldn’t do this exercise anymore, so screw him.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:30] So I’m here and I’m like, All right, fine. So if if an athlete tells you, hey, man, you got you got to lay off, change the exercise, do it this way, do it that way. Usually it’s a little bit better, but telling people, just stop working out. It’s not going to help. But the surgeons can actually tell you, hey, look, this motion that you’re doing is creating this issue because it’s it’s impinging this ligament, tendon, whatever. So once you get the information, then maybe you can start modifying your exercises to do whatever you want. But the thing is, is that if you’re doing an exercise that is hurting your joints, stop it. Don’t don’t suck it up and try to get through it. Figure out why. Stop it or stop the exercise altogether, for instance. This is why I’ve taken bench press. Bar. Bench, press. Out of all the workouts I tell people to do because it biometrically impedes the shoulder, that your normal range of motions, your hands come together. Elbows come together. That’s how the pack muscles work. The problem is, is that if you’re holding on to a bar, your hands can’t come together. And so you’re you’re directly impeding the biomechanics of the shoulder, which is why lots and lots and lots of people who do a lots of bench press end up tearing muscles and having issues, have to have surgery in their joints.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:40] They mess with their shoulders and that’s if their neck is because you’re you’re forcing your body under load repetitively to do emotion the body is not designed to do. So again, biomechanical function, start doing that stuff. So, you know, I get it. Everybody’s like, well, what are you bench press? Fine. So if bench press is your thing, cool, There’s ways you can kind of help the shoulder out. I mean. I know lots of good shoulder surgery. So if you guys need your ax reset, I’ll help you out that. Because if you just can’t give up, that’s fine. Some people it’s your sport, right? Powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting, you know, that’s kind of your sport. So it is what it is. There’s ways around it. But the biggest thing is that I wanted to make sure that everybody heard me when I said, if you’re hurting a joint doing a motion, you should stop that motion regardless of consistency. Because again, consistency works in two ways. If you’re constantly damaging something, it will get more and more and more and more and more damage until you have to have surgery or you or you’re done, you can’t do anything else. You know, if you destroy a joint, you know, as a joint replacement, there’s not a whole lot you can do. So. I mean, you know, even people who get new hips, it’s not always like, I got my new hip and now everything’s perfectly fine forever. It’s like, well, for the next 7 or 8 years, I’m pretty good. Then we have to start talking about getting a new have my old hip replaced. So. And low back stuff. I know they have artificial discs.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:07] Don’t you don’t want to walk down that road. Just don’t. So, you know, I know that that kind of takes away from a lot of that really heavy back spot. But, you know, and that’s a trend. As long as, you know, that’s cool. Like if, you know, hey, I’m going to be able to squat 600 pounds and tell talk to everybody how I squatted 600 pounds or 700 pounds or whatever the number is, and you’re super excited about that and you do that and that’s what you want to do and you’re willing to sacrifice your low spine for it. That’s your call. But I mean, the amount of people who have spinal, you know, desiccation, damage to the disks, damage to the joint, damage to the bodies of the vertebra from. Doing back squat like that is pretty high. I mean, it’s not as much damage as we see from kettlebell swings, which is the dumbest exercise I’ve ever heard of my entire life. But. Again, if that’s your thing and you don’t care about blowing your desks out and having to have back surgery and then putting yourself into a life problem through your lower back, knock out those kettlebell swings all day long. But again, if you can find the exercises that are biomechanically functional, especially for your body, which most people are going to have, you can figure that out pretty easily. Once you know, those exercises are the best exercise for the muscle for your biomechanics, then you just stick with that exercise for a long time and just focus on your form. I mean, you can the thing of this is like there’s a lot of exercises that don’t matter. You want to go from a standing alternating bicep curl that works both your core and your arms, and you want to go sit out on a preacher bench.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:45] It’s still going to work your biceps. You’re just going to have almost no activation of your core, which I would tell you. You want because you should want to work as many muscles as you can at one time because one takes more space, so you’re going to burn more fat. Second of all, you’re going to get more definition of your inner core, which is awesome. Like, you know, any more function your core. So whenever you can take more into your exercise, I would recommend doing. Which is why when I design all my workouts, they’re all designed around. Primary muscle group so backed by chest tri, whatever it is and core because we want to make sure that balance, coordination and stability are high. We want to be sure that the core is built up the way it wants to because a really properly built core is beautiful. So those are some of the things that I would tell you to kind of focus on. But I want to make sure that I got out and was like, Hey, if you’re doing something that hurts. That’s bad. So quit being consistent with damaging tissue. You’re not trying to damage.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:48] If you damage muscle tissue, it regrows bigger and stronger. Pretty easy. Pretty quick. Don’t worry about that. That the goal of lifting is to damage your muscle tissue. If you damage, leave it tendon or joint. You’re putting yourself in a position where you’re not going to this very well soon, and as soon as you get to that point, you’re going to start having really, really big issues with plateaus you’re gonna have issues with. Then once you hit a plateau, you pass and you push through it, and that’s when you’re going to injure yourself. But I see this over and over again. So if it hurts while you’re doing it, find a different way of doing it. You know, find a different way of attacking that muscle if you really want to. But if it doesn’t hurt, stick with the best biomechanical function for your range of motion. So, All right, you guys, any other questions of questions at Chalmers Wellness.com or drop in the comments? Thanks. Have a good day. Thanks for your time.

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Dr. Matt Chalmers

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