Damage, Injuries, Dysfunctions - Which Exercises Can Cause Them
Wojciech Wiśniewski
2026-03-24
6 min. read
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Damages and injuries are the worst things that can occur during exercise. Particular emphasis should be placed on safety and risk minimization to ensure continuous and thoughtful development. Prevention can be achieved through appropriately conducted warm-ups, technical excellence, and the selection of suitable exercises that match our current skill level and limitations resulting from past (or ongoing) injuries, postural defects, or mobility deficits.
Training on devices
If you are not a beginner who has sustained an injury or a bodybuilder who is working on the details of your physique, you should try to avoid exercises on machines. They limit the range of motion and force the direction and work in the joints. These exercises are non-functional and do not develop stabilizing muscles. Two of them require special attention due to the potentially high risk they carry. The first is the leg extension (extension). In this exercise, the work of the quadriceps muscle is strongly isolated, while the muscles of the ankle-calf group are inactive. The consequence is a lack of adequate stabilization and protection of the knee, which is subjected to large shear forces. As a result, there is an excessive stretching of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), which increases the risk of its damage. In addition, this machine forces a single axis of rotation for the knee, which is variable under normal conditions. Try to avoid this device, and if you cannot avoid it, perform single-leg exercises on it by trying to contract the biceps femoris muscles before each repetition. The second non-recommended exercise on the machine is the squat on the Smith machine. The guides force the movement path here, which becomes unnatural, and improperly distributed forces affect the load on the anterior cruciate ligament, the patellar ligament, and the lower back. This exercise, like most on machines, releases stabilizing muscles from work, and its effectiveness (muscle engagement) compared to the conventional squat is 43% lower.
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