What Not To Do

A good amount of injuries are related to posture. And a good amount of injuries can be prevented if your static and dynamic posture is taken into consideration. If you've been sitting at a desk, behind the wheel of a car or sitting in front of your computer looking for Patriots tickets on Ebay all day, here are five things you shouldn't be doing while you're at the gym:

1. Get on the bike. Find a better option to warm up or do your cardio work. You've been seated most of the day, probably hunched over. So stand up, straighten out and get tall!!!!
2. Bench Press. Rather than tightening up your internal rotators even more, work on some rowing exercises or any type of rhomboid and mid-trap work.
3. Seated Military Press, Seated Triceps Extensions, Seated Hip Abduction....anything seated. This goes back to my first point. We're not made to sit on our butts all day, so stand up get get tall!!
4. Bicep Curls. Your arms may look great, but all that biceps work combined with terrible posture is a recipe for shoulder injuries.
5. Crunches. Same thing as the first four points. You're reinforcing that awful, shortened posture. There are plenty of other ways to work your abdominal area: reverse crunches, planks, woodchops, Russian twists, etc..