5 Exercises A Personal Trainer Wishes You Would Skip

No matter what kind of exercise you choose, we applaud you for getting out there and doing it. And you’ll feel the benefits almost immediately: You’ll be a little bit more energized, less stressed, and more confident than you were before your workout.

Of course, if you’re going to put in the effort, you might as well do something that will help you get stronger while protecting you from injury. “Selecting movements that are safe and effective can be a challenge, especially for new exercisers, but it is important for long-term results,” says Jacqueline Crockford, an ACE-certified exercise physiologist and education specialist. It doesn’t help that some moves — tricep dips, for example — just won’t go away, even though they’re potentially harmful. You may even go to a group fitness class and have an instructor tell you to do them.

In the slides that follow, we’ve outlined five exercises that are best avoided and better moves to try instead. “If performing exercises like tricep dips has been a part of your workout routine for years, it may be difficult to give them up. But even if you do these moves with perfect form, you likely won’t see the results you want if you keep repeating them — and you may make yourself more injury-prone,” Crockford explains. “It’s always best to change things up.”