• Seated Machine Squeezes -Groin Strength. This exercise occurs when you’re seated on a machine and the machine resists you as your squeeze your legs together and work your “inner thighs.” Unfortunately, you’re not working in a functional way, and your body views this as entirely unnatural.

Your inner thigh /groin muscles help you bring your legs toward mid-line in walking, running and other activities. They also function to raise your hip and knee, and help with movements such as: walking, hiking, climbing, standing from a seated position, running, moving side to side, and other movements that require stability in standing.

The movements of running, sprinting, moving side to side occur in soccer.

Notice one thing, in common, amongst these activities. They are all standing, and they all require the use of more muscles at once. If you don’t train the lower body in the way it works, it responds by getting injured. Getting stronger and staying injury free is a sign of your body understanding that it can do more.

• Spreads on a machine – this is the same as above, except the machine resists you moving your knees apart. Again, this is not very functional. Think about it… when do you ever have to forcefully move your legs apart in a seated position during a game or training?

Plus, again, you’re working one joint at a time, instead of many at once, so your body sees this movement as unnatural. It adds compression to your hip joints, pulls on your groin, and causes your body to guard itself and withdraw its own forceful contraction.

• Leg Curls on a machine– these are terrible for building hamstring strength. This exercise puts more pressure on your lower back than actually working the hamstring muscle. To add to this it is an exercise of isolation. Unless you are in the initial stages of rehabilitation of a hamstring muscle, but even then, this exercise is not functional.