[inaudible] And did you make a New Year’s resolution to go to the gym every day? Well, how’s that working out? You could be doing it completely wrong. Up next, the fitness tips to keep you out of the emergency room.
[inaudible] right now. More Americans have been hitting the gym this year, part of New Year’s resolutions, of course, to try and get fit. But as gym membership skyrockets, so does the number of people getting hurt. Not anymore after this segment. Each year some people go to the emergency room for injuries caused by exercise equipment. So how can we make sure that doesn’t happen to you? What we want to teach you to do the right way. And joining us right now is Dr. Hooman Melamed. He’s a board-certified orthopedic spine surgeon, and he wants to keep you off his operating table. Dr., welcome. Good morning.
Good morning. Good morning.
A lot of times, I think, people head to the gym, they’re not used to being in there, and they bite off more than they can chew and hurt themselves.
Absolutely, especially you see that in the beginning of the year, what we talked about. Like, everybody’s like, they want to get that perfect body, the New Year resolution, and you know, people are not patient. They just want to get that result.
So this is [inaudible], but for those other people like me that use the elliptical, right, to warm up and to work out, there’s problems with this. Even though it’s great for your knees, there’s a way of doing it wrong that worries you.
Absolutely, is that a lot of the exercises people do, they struggle with the elliptical to warm up, and we can see how the people start getting lazy on it. They start leaning on the, hunched over. They hunch over. That’s right. So you start hunching over, they’re looking at the phone a lot, their iPad, and you know, you start arching your neck a little bit, arching your back, and now you’re losing the form. So now you start basically having repetitive trauma, which you’re not realizing, to your neck and back, which sets you up for injury later on when you get tired.
So you don’t want to hunch back. I’m not sure. Right, you want to be standing up. Exactly. So you want to be standing up straight. Lock everything. Lock your core here, lock your belly here, lock your butt here, and basically you start basically like controlled movements, basically. There you go. Everything moving in one fashion. That’s perfect posture.
Workouts, yeah. CrossFit gaining in popularity, the kettlebells. It seems like everybody’s trying to use these, but yes, how, what’s, what are some of the improper ways people…
Exactly what he’s showing. A lot of people start basically jerking their back and jerking their arms up and their shoulders, because they’re doing too much, [inaudible]. You need to be doing about 15 to 20 reps, like, comfortable. Okay. And the way to do it is that you can see he’s putting one knee a little bit ahead, a little bit bending the knees, and then keeping the elbows at the tight, everything else tight. You’re just basically moving [inaudible] fashion.
So here’s the thing, doctor: don’t try to impress the girls if you’re the guy. Get, get a weight that you can do 10 or 15 times. Your body will respond correctly. The hardest thing you can do, which you also have done, right, one of the best things you can do for your core are squats. But what are some of the common mistakes?
Squat is one of the best exercises. I love the exercise, but I actually have gotten hurt on squat myself. The form is very critical on it, and a lot of people go about it the wrong way. And basically, when they go down, they go down too much.
You go down too much, like all the way down?
Yeah, exactly. They’re way down, right. You don’t want to go down that much. You don’t want to go, you don’t want to be so close to someone doing abdominals. Exactly. You don’t want to go down too much, and also you don’t want to be your knees, as you’re going now, to come in in front of your, in front of your toes. You want to keep the knees basically back. Lock your back. And the other thing, sometimes people go down this way. You basically want to go down in a controlled fashion. You don’t want to go down more than 70 degrees.
Right. I also pretend you’re sitting on a stool, right?
Yes, yes. You can turn to the side so we can see the two differences this way. So we can see the knees going out way over the feet, or just going right down like that. Yeah.
All right, so let’s move on. Now we got to do the abs, because we need eight to twelve boxes by the summer, right? All right, what’s the wrong way to [inaudible]?
A lot of people, they’re like, I want to get that six-pack, but they don’t realize, you know, the six-pack is a, you know, you have to do a lot of other things to get a six-pack. It’s not just the crunches. And a lot of times people use their neck to jerk themselves forward. So you don’t, like what she’s doing right now, you want to touch your ears. You want to just touch your ears. You don’t want to move your neck at all. Your neck has to be straight. All the movement has to be coming from right here, not your back. You don’t want to jerk your back. You want to basically tighten your glutes. All the movement has to be coming from here and contracting here. If you can do 15 right reps, it’s much greater than doing 50 crunches, like, going too fast.
I don’t know if the doctor’s being smart here. We just hurt your business. We have prevented less people from coming to [inaudible].
That’s okay. I’ve done my job.
All right. All right, good job, fitness models. Thank you so much [inaudible] for donating this great equipment. They have great equipment, and yeah, they’re the ones that donated. They do great products, yeah, [inaudible]. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. 29 minutes after the hour, here’s what’s coming up.
