"Form"

[GHOSTrun]

FOR F#$KS SAKE.

Why are there people doing less than 100kg squats, bench presses and deadlifts spending more time analysing their "form" then actually lifting?

IT'S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE
squat - put the weight on your back and sit down
bench - press the weight
deadlift - pick the weight up

I am so f'n sick of seeing skinny teens standing around the cable pulley station with the one instructing the others on correct "form" doing 7.5kg cable flies.

FOR F#$KS SAKE.

Here's some food for thought. When you first start training as a complete noob, you are using an empty bar, and as you get stronger you start adding weight to the bar. Doing the exercises wrongly can benefit you by progressively building up strength in those bad positions in a safe way, so in the future when you're doing a lift with real weight and you come out the groove you don't break in half.

As you grow more experienced you will learn yourself what corrections you need to make to make your lifting more efficient (i.e. correct FORM) - that's a given and comes with the territory. I just cannot get over how many people I see wasting so much time on the little things when they are insignificant. As you start to get stronger they become significant, but for a novice, in my opinion, the most important thing is time spent LIFTING.

/rant
/discuss

 

[adamklam]

FOR F#$KS SAKE.

Why are there people doing less than 100kg squats, bench presses and deadlifts spending more time analysing their "form" then actually lifting?

IT'S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE
squat - put the weight on your back and sit down
bench - press the weight
deadlift - pick the weight up

I am so f'n sick of seeing skinny teens standing around the cable pulley station with the one instructing the others on correct "form" doing 7.5kg cable flies.

FOR F#$KS SAKE.

Here's some food for thought. When you first start training as a complete noob, you are using an empty bar, and as you get stronger you start adding weight to the bar. Doing the exercises wrongly can benefit you by progressively building up strength in those bad positions in a safe way, so in the future when you're doing a lift with real weight and you come out the groove you don't break in half.

As you grow more experienced you will learn yourself what corrections you need to make to make your lifting more efficient (i.e. correct FORM) - that's a given and comes with the territory. I just cannot get over how many people I see wasting so much time on the little things when they are insignificant. As you start to get stronger they become significant, but for a novice, in my opinion, the most important thing is time spent LIFTING.

/rant
/discuss

Quote for Truth!

 

[Kyle Aaron]

It takes 200-300 practices of a movement or skill to learn to do it right. It takes 2,000-3,000 practices to unlearn an old movement pattern and learn a new one.

Get it right with 40kg, then it's more likely to be right with 140kg later on. I'd rather learn while lifting light weights than have to relearn while lifting heavy ones. Better to learn by 40kg for 200 reps than 140kg for 2,000 reps.

When you're lifting heavier weights your form will be compromised anyway - you're so busy trying to push the fucking weight up you won't listen to "knees out!" or whatever. If the form starts good and then gets a bit rough, you're still okay; if it starts crap and gets rougher, you might be in trouble.

If you never learned good form on 40kg you will probably never learn good form at all. Which in most cases will not only risk injury, but limit the person's lifts. If for example your knees come in on your squat, it's mostly quads involved, you're not bringing in your glutes and hamstrings as much as if your knees were out. So by sloppy form you're cheating yourself of weight you could be lifting.

All that said, it's lifting weights, not ballet. It doesn't have to be perfect, just good. And a few reps can be sloppy without serious risk of injury.

 

[TTT]

Ghosty - the problem here is that you train at FF.
Hope that helps.

 

[Bazza20]

Why is it one or the other.

Learn good form and get stronger.

If you getting injured all the time because of shitty form your gonna have a tuff time getting stronger.

and why do you give a shit what everyone else is doing at your gym.

 

[GHOSTrun]

Why is it one or the other.

Learn good form and get stronger.

If you getting injured all the time because of shitty form your gonna have a tuff time getting stronger.

and why do you give a shit what everyone else is doing at your gym.

I see PT's getting paid *a lot* of cash money on the gym floor and the clients have done SFA, seriously, NOTHING, for the whole hour. I don't think it's fair on the clients.

And it's not one or the other, it's when you're starting off (working up from an empty bar) getting your form 1,000,000% right isn't important, you aren't working with weights anywhere near heavy enough to injure yourself, and as you spend more time under the bar the form will come to you anyway - like I said it's not rocket science.

And the clients can't get injured if they never actually lift any weight - maybe that's the new PT approach, cheaper than insurance!

 

[Kyle Aaron]

I see PT's getting paid *a lot* of cash money on the gym floor and the clients have done SFA, seriously, NOTHING, for the whole hour. I don't think it's fair on the clients.

As TTT said, you're at Fitness First.

Expecting good personal training at Fitness First is like expecting a good old-fashioned big meaty burger at McDs. That's not what they're about.

I teach all my clients good form, yesterday Monica at 64kg squatted 50kg 1x20. You may or may not consider that "heavy weight", I would call it a "good start" and "more than is usually done in mainstream gyms", and I'm willing to bet money none of the trainers at your FF have ever coached a woman to squatting 20 deep reps of 50kg.

Don't confuse the shitfulness of the gym you're at with a more widespread problem. It's not form vs weight, since at your place people are getting neither.

 

[gongi_meter]

It takes 200-300 practices of a movement or skill to learn to do it right. It takes 2,000-3,000 practices to unlearn an old movement pattern and learn a new one.

that doesn't make sense.

 

[GHOSTrun]

Kyle, I love Fitness First, it's great - new equipment, plenty of space to work, air conditioned, food and drinks right there, and plenty of flange to look at.

I just get sick of seeing and hearing people who spend more time worrying about form then actually lifting. That's what the rant is about.

 

[eje]

that doesn't make sense.

Yeah it does.
New movement = 200 times to get it right
Change an old learnt movement to new movement = 2000 times to get it right

 

[Dancelot]

There's a balance.

Obsessing with form and not progressing with heavier weights is stupid. The kind of people your rant is directed at often have terrible form anyway, but they think that lifting light weight slowly and carefully is "good form".

As long as your form is somewhat good, you should keep lifting heavier while working on form.

On the flip side, a significant number of novice lifters keep trying to lift heavy all the time without thinking about how bad their form is. After a while, their bad habits become more ingrained and it's much harder to fix down the track. The number of reps Kyle quoted above is about right. They end up "plateauing" at a certain weight and cannot progress because their technique is a disaster. When such lifters come to my club, the first thing the coaches do is to fix their technique. I went through the same thing and my lifting immediately improved afterwards after months of getting stuck.

 

[gongi_meter]

Yeah it does.
New movement = 200 times to get it right
Change an old learnt movement to new movement = 2000 times to get it right

i don't believe that for a second. please provide references.

it takes more like 10,000 lifts to master a movement in my experience.

 

[Dancelot]

"Get it right" means you consistently do good reps with that movement. Not "mastering" it. That's another level entirely. Stop with the semantics.

 

[Kyle Aaron]

Dan has it.

After I have seen a newbie do a couple of hundred reps in an exercise over a few weeks, I will usually be confident that if I leave them alone, they won't injure themselves, and provided they stick to the exercise and progress the resistance (which is a big "if") they'll get good results. I don't expect them to have mastered the movement in that time or be able to teach it to others, or to be able to keep good form as they approach their 1RM, just to perform it safely and effectively at low to moderate loads (ie loads which are above what most people do, but below what's needed for a strength competition).

If the person has previously learned another wrong way of doing it, it takes much much longer.

Much the same applies to other mostly-motor skills, like when teaching a horse to be ridden, or someone to whack a ball with a cricket bat properly, take bodyfat caliper measurements, and so on. Again, this isn't about mastery, that's something different.

But I have said again and again that I am not in the business of teaching mastery in exercises, I teach beginners. Beginners don't need it to be perfect, they only need it to be good enough that they minimise their risk of injury and the exercise is effective in taking them from being weak and clumsy to being strong enough for day-to-day life and recreational sports. And that is the vast majority of people in gyms, especially Fitness First.

 

[NPR]

Mike you must be retarded.

Last night you were complaing to me about how your lwr back is fucked, how it literally crippled you yesterday for a few minutes.

Yet you're not even at Markos's beginner standards of strength despite years of training, and youre injured to boot. FFS

Thinking you will just naturally fix bad habits in your lifting as you add weight to the bar is like someone saying your become a more competent driver as you put more power into your car.

WRONG!!

You're just setting yourself up for a more spectacular fuck up when shit goes sideways.

Learn it right the first time.

 

[GHOSTrun]

^ I was waiting for it

Nick you do 20 rep squats EVERYDAY and see how long your back holds up for. I did it for 2 weeks solid. My injury came from overtraining and never letting it heal, nothing to do with my squatting form.

And what has the beginner strength standard got to do with this? I'm only a few kilos away from making each of those lifts anyway and I don't even train for 1RM, as well as being the smallest guy lifting + there's quite a few people who can hit those lifts that can't match the 20 rep shit I do AND they're bigger, and they certainly don't have the legs to show for it.

 

[Goosey]

garbage in, garbage out.

This is a very interesting thread, thank you.

Squatting 20 reps a day is taking a huge risk and the injury or injuries you have sustained would more likely be you doing the exercise incorrectly.

 

[Kyle Aaron]

Nick you do 20 rep squats EVERYDAY and see how long your back holds up for. I did it for 2 weeks solid. My injury came from overtraining and never letting it heal, nothing to do with my squatting form

If you have perfect or even merely good form on every rep of 20 rep squats you can't be using much weight. More likely, you are using lots of weight, and your form degrades through the set.

Do that every day for 14 days and injury can be expected, yes.

This has been a useful thread. Mike has told us form isn't important, only lifting heavy weight, and we've found out that he used poor form while lifting heavy weight and injured himself. He's taught us a valuable lesson: results count, and count much more than words or theories.

Thanks Mike.

 

[NPR]

So there is nothing wrong with you're movement, just doing it too often resulted in a serious injury. You're logic is retarded.

You've been training for years mike yet you haven't squatted 3 wheels plus you're injured. I'm sure you know what you're doing.

 

[Goosey]

Hear me now, if you cannot properly perform a squat without weight, you have no business doing it with extra weight on your back.

At my age you really appreciate healthy knees and back.