There’s nothing worse than injuring yourself in pursuit of gains.

There’s a right and a wrong way of doing things and when it comes to working out there’s no exception. The idea of winging an exercise is probably one of the more ludicrous notions someone could have. Go ahead and try to lift heavy on the bench press without having a clue how to perform the action correctly. Let’s see if you don’t seriously hurt yourself, you’d be lucky if you received only a minor injury. Many people are out there trying to get gains, but receiving pricey medical bills for messing themselves up in the gym. One exercise a lot of people don’t do correctly is the bent over barbell row.

So what exactly are people getting wrong? Well, people tend to over exaggerate a particular motion when performing an exercise and in the beginning that’s not so much of an issue. When performing the bent over barbell row we pull the bar up towards our chest, our shoulder blades pushing back and inwards towards each other. When first performing the exercise there’s a tendency to squeeze the shoulder blades to the extreme. Some people may think the more contraction the better, but truly, that school of thought will lead to some major issues down the line.

Not exactly sure what we mean by pushing the shoulders back too far? Take a look at this informative video by Jeff of Athlean-X.

So have you been guilty of performing this exercise incorrectly? Let us know about your mishaps and/or improvements in the comments below and be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook and Twitter.