Dangerous home gym exercises – where would YouTube, TikTok and friends be without them? But some lifts you do at home can really harm your health. Learn how to avoid – or improve – them!
Working out at home should be fun. Having a home gym often means you need to be quite inventive about the way you lift. Variety also helps keep things fresh when you’re always working out in the same space.
But when it comes to home gyms, safety must always come first.
A home gym is not like a commercial gym, where someone is always around to help (or to call for help) if you get in trouble. As such, there are some dangerous home gym exercises I think fail the risk-to-reward litmus test.
Here’s my list – and some pointers about possible alternatives!
1. Barbell Bench Press (The Wrong Way!)
When I look back at how I used to bench before I bought a squat rack, I can’t help wincing.
You should only be benching without safety pins or spotter arms if you have someone who knows how to spot a bench in the gym with you. For most home gym owners, this isn’t a regular occurrence.
So bite the bullet and buy a squat or power rack with safety pins, or a squat stand with spotter arms. If your grip gives way, or you fail a lift (it happens often with the bench when you are lifting for strength), you could get stuck underneath the bar. Or worse.
Also, never use collars on the bench press. The plates won’t come loose when you are pressing vertically, don’t worry. And lifting without collars means that if you do get stuck under your bar, you can tilt the bar to one side to dump the weights off… and escape to safety!
2. Dumbbell Pullovers
If you have a gleaming set of fixed weight dumbbells, my apologies. Go about your pullovers in peace and ignore us poor plebs who can’t afford such luxuries.
For the rest of us mere mortals, the DB pullover is dangerous. If you don’t have fixed dumbbells, you are in one of two dumbbell camps: You either have loadable handles or you have a pair of adjustable dumbbells.
I personally have very little positive to say about adjustable dumbbells, but I will save that rant for another day. While they are possibly less dangerous for pullovers than the loadable option, I still don’t like them for this lift.
There’s too much plastic in an adjustable dumbbell for you to be lifting it across the entire length of your skull. They also weren’t designed to be gripped by the weight plate side, so they are typically weaker if you them this way.
The loadable dumbbell handle is more precarious still for this lift. They require you to put your faith in your dumbbell collars – because when the DB passes over our head, it’s those collars versus gravity.
If those collars give out on you mid-lift, half a loaded dumbbell could come dropping towards your face at high speed. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
Use a weight plate or a kettlebell instead and live to see another day.
3. Cable Crunches (on a DIY Cable Setup)
I quite like the cable crunch. It’s one of the very few genuinely progressively overloadable lifts out there for the abs. And as a proud owner of a DIY cable setup, built from scratch, I enjoy using the setup for ab training.
But DIY cable setups tend to involve unhoused weight stacks that sort of, well, dangle in the air during your lifts – suspended only by a piece of metal wire.
I use all sorts of workarounds to keep my stack from swinging too wildly, including tricks with resistance bands, chains and more. But no matter what you do, I think it’s deeply unwise to lift without keeping your eye on the stack.
Most people I see at commercial gyms doing cable crunches do the exercise with their backs to the stack. Fine with a commercial cable station. But with a DIY version, you need to invert this lift and do it facing the stack.
Airborne weight plates that you can’t see, even out of the corner of your eye? That’s a big fat no in my book.
4. Squats (Done Wrong)
No, I’m not going to sh** on the squat. I love this exercise, particularly the low-bar version. But even in commercial gyms, I see people doing this lift outside the squat rack with no spotter arms. Or using squat stands. If you are paying money to use a gym that doesn’t have a squat rack, I don’t even know why you are going to that gym.
But I digress.
If you fail in a rack, the bar will drop on the pins or arms. If you fail outside, the bar – and all the weight on it – could roll over your neck on its way to the ground.
Get a rack or go goblet. It’s that simple.
5. Deadlifts
If you want a back injury, this lift is…
…nah, I’m just messing with you. I love deadlifts more than life itself. Never let any waffling heathens tell you they aren’t safe (there are plenty around!)
Done properly, deadlifts won’t hurt your lower back and joints – they will probably BULLETPROOF them.
Just make sure you learn correct form before you start doing them alone.
Dangerous Home Gym Exercises: Staying Safe
If you feel any pain or discomfort with a lift, or feel like the setup looks unsafe, give it a miss. No set, no rep is worth a visit to A&E, a prolonged period on the sidelines or worse. Dangerous home gym exercises, simply put, just are not worth doing.
If you aren’t confident about what you’re about to do, the rule of thumb for home gym owners is don’t do it. Find an alternative you feel more sure about, something that doesn’t cause you pain.
Your home gym fitness journey isn’t a sprint. It isn’t even a marathon. It’s a mega ultramarathon, so be sure to stay safe and sustainable. And if in doubt, err on the side of caution.
