Including myself, we have a tendency to rush to get a strength and physique results and end up in unwanted results such as injury, accumulation of visceral or inflammatory fat, lack of energy and so on. One of the reason that we rush and grind to get results is because of social media. On social media you can find video showing how much people are lifting and grinding in their workout. This seems to be giving the misconception that we all need to be doing the same. One thing that I can get out of those videos are to work hard and work consistently.
Over two decades of training myself and my clients, I put more emphasis on the importance of foundation or in this article I use the term skills. Whether it is squat, deadlift, push ups, pull ups, run, and so on, when the basic skills are not being practiced, as the load and exercise volume increase, the body may not be able to handle because of the poor foundation.
Let's take squat for example. Sticking your hip back to avoid knees go over the toe like you are trying to sit in the chair is not a squat. Reason why this happening is because the ankle is too weak and too stiff, which put more pressure and load on the knee. Proper squat is, as you can see on the picture to the right, pushing the knees forward as you drop the hips down. If this is not happening then you should correct your issues to practice the proper skill.
When practicing your exercise skills there are 2 things that I focus on. First is full range of movement focusing on skeletal structure. Second is moving with full range without pain or straining in muscles and joints.
Full range of movement is the first thing that I look for. Lat pulldown or pull ups for example. Person should be able to start the pull at arm fully extended position including shoulder blades fully elevated. Then the pull should be starting from depression for shoulder blades followed by pull by the arm. The bar which is been pulled should be pull to the sternum or chest bone. If any of these movement patterns are not being performed it is vital to find out the cause. Cause of skill failure can be tightness and weakness of the muscles that are required in exercise skills. Rather than forcing my clients to lift heavy and ignore the proper skill, I've seen better results with having my clients spend time to practice the skills with lighter weights and make sure all the requirements are properly executed before increasing the load.
Second thing I look for is the pain free movement. It is vital for me to have my clients to perform the movement without the pain. This is to avoid any compensation while performing exercise. Let's take push ups for example. It is a very effective upper body exercise when done right, however, if the person has wrist issue, most likely the push up form will be compensated. I could have them use push up bar to minimize the pain but rather than doing that, using wrist mobility and strengthening exercises to improve the wrist issue should come first while strengthening the upper body with other form of exercises. Writs immobility and weakness is due to usage of computer, mouse, cellphone, driving which requires hand movement but not wrist movement.
Remember, exercise is not just about muscle but also tendons and ligaments that allow our joints to move more freely. If they are ignored, our body will experience a consequence with joint irritations such as arthritis.
When you do exercise next, think of why you are performing the exercise and pay attention to the detail of the exercise, then work on improving on what may not be happening. Could be as simple as hand positioning in push ups, foot placement in squats, shoulder blade tightness in lat pulldown, or not fully knowing how to engage your "core". Skill work does not need too much load and should be done that way. Yet, because of body manipulation work, your muscles, ligaments, tendons, nerves system and even brain will need to be working even harder, which leads to better muscle development along with improving your exercise skills.
Kota Shimada
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