So have you seen the new Batman movie, The Dark Night Rises? If not you should check it out. From the special effects, to the story line and acting everything was very well done. But even though I'd recommend this one and say it was probably one of the best the series I wouldn't say it was perfect. There were three things that missed the mark on this one.  First of all it's hard to hear let alone understand the bad guy, Bane. And sorry ladies, if you had a thing for Tom Hardy who plays this character this movie might wreck it for you. What were the other two issues I had with this movie? Well one was how the other characters refer to Batman as 'The Batman'. It just sounded funny and made me think of all the football players from Ohio State who identify themselves as playing at 'The Ohio State'. It just sounds goofy, that's all. But my major gripe with this movie was how they dropped the ball with Batman's workout. You see after 'The Batman' fights Bane for the first time he is banished to well-type prison cell. This is supposedly a greater form of punishment because you can see the sky and your way out but only one person has every escaped. So while 'The Batman' is recovering from the older-brother style beating he got from Bane he starts to train to build up his strength in anticipation for a future battle with the bad guy. And you'd think with the popularity of obstacle-style races such as Tough Mudder they'd have him doing obstacles of some type. Or maybe with the new show 'American Ninja Warrior' you'd see a rip-off of some of the physical feats you see on this show. Heck, you could even...

A colleague wrote a blog post recently about the leg press machine. He made some great points that I thought should be shared with you. So here are some of the reasons to be cautious with the leg press and some tips to perform this lift as safely as possible.For many people when they want to do a lower body workout there are a lot of exercises they could choose from. They could perform squats, deadlifts, lunges, step ups, leg extensions, leg curls, leg presses with multiple variations of each of these.But if we don't have a lot of experience in the weight room we may shy away fromt the free weight exercises. And as a result people tend to migrate towards the leg press machine.And even if we're not a newbie to the gym we will sometimes opt for the leg press because it's one exercise where we can really load up the machine with lots of weight and feel strong.But the leg press has some limitations. One of the biggest is that it results in a posterior tilt of the pelvis as the knees and hips flex to lower the platform.And as the pelvis tilts posteriorly it causes the low back to go into flexion and increases the chance of disc herniation.And nobody wants this. But there are certain things we can to minimize this from happening.First, our core works the best for us when we establish proper posture.  From the head down through the trunk we know this to mean:* neutral head* chest tall* shoulders down and back* neutral spineIf we can establish these positions prior to initiating the lift we'll do a better job of protecting the spine.What we sometimes see happen  are the following mistates:* forward head* flexed neck* chest and shoulders rounded forwardSo before we even attempt...