There were two lat-pulldown stations positioned next to each other in this gym I belonged to several years ago. On one of them was an older female who was lifting, if memory serves, 10 pounds. I can only assume that she misread the name of the exert and thought it was a lap pulldown, because thats where the bar ended up when she rolled it down the front of her torso.
On the adjacent machine was a guy who was lifting, if memory serves, the entire weight stack, or most of it. He rose off the seat at the beginning of each rep to help him get the stack moving, and then leaned back at a 45 -degree angle to get the bar to his chest. The deeper he got into his set, the more momentum and body English he employed.
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Two people, two completely different ideas about how to do one of the simplest workouts in the gym. And both of them completely wrong.
If you walked into that same gym today, opportunities are youd find multiple versions of exerts hardly anyone did ten years ago, like planks and kettlebell swingings. Those are in addition to the classic workouts, the simple ones that every lifter has done as long as hes been lifting, but may not be doing in a way that helps him reach his goals.
Theres more free datum than ever, and yet form hasnt improved, told Nick Tumminello, writer of the upcoming Building Muscle and Performance: A Program for Size, Strength, and Speed, and a trainer are stationed in Fort Lauderdale. Men are stubborn, and they always think they know better.
Flawed exercise form genuinely comes down to three basic problems :P TAGEND
Lack of control
Poor stability
Misunderstanding the phase of the exercise
Lets tackle them in that order.
Control issues
Most people are in the gym to do bodybuilding, Tumminello told. That is, to build muscle. But most guys in the gym train like weightlifters, where the goal is to lift the weight . Theres a big difference. Bodybuilding is about controlling the weight through the entire range of motion.
Take the lateral raise, for example. The way most guys do it, Tumminello told, is to swaying the weight up, and let it crash down.
But the entire phase of the exert is to target the middle the members of the deltoid muscles. To construct them grow, you need to put them under tension. Theyre under the most tension at the opening of the range of the motionthe part everyone cheats through, he says.
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You see this over and over in workouts designed to target specific muscles, including the lat pulldowns I described at the beginning. Tumminello also mentioned the bent-over barbell row: Theyll pull it halfway with good form, then jolt it the rest of the way.
He offers a simple fix :P TAGEND
Select a weight you can hold at the point of maximum tension, with good form.
If you cant hold it four to five seconds, then the weights too damned heavy, he told. You dont require to hold it when you train, but thats how you should test it.
For most bodybuilding exerciseslateral raises, lat pulldowns, bent-over or seated rowsyou can test your weight at the end of the range of motion. For biceps curls, its the midpoint, when your forearms are parallel to the floor.
Or you can make it simpler, and merely recollect which part of the lift you typically "re going to have to" defraud to get through. If you cant hold it there for a few seconds, try using a lighter weight.
Bad posture
Picture these four workouts :P TAGEND
Plank
Pushup
Loaded carry
Bear crawl
What do they have in common? If you answered, Theyre all the same exercise, youre a lot smarter than me. It never passed to me until Alwyn Cosgrove, my coauthor on the New Rules of Lifting volumes, explained it.
Of course they dont seem alike. But the key to good form is exactly the same: Whatever your posture is standing up straight-out, thats what it should be when youre doing a timber, or a moving timber( aka pushup ), or a walking timber( aka loaded carry ), or a scooting timber( aka bear crawling ).
On the timber, pushup, and carry you should be able to draw a straight line from your ears through your shoulders, hips, and heels. On the bear crawling, the line should connect your ears, shoulders, and hips, with your torso parallel to the floor.
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The most common mistakes are postural. With the timber, pushup, and bear crawling, you find these almost every day :P TAGEND
sticking your butt in the air
letting your stomach sag towards the floor
lifting your head to check out the form of the person in front of you
On a pushup, you can tell if youre lifting your butt when your snout reaches the floor ahead of your chest. If your stomach is sagging on a timber or pushup, youll probably feel it as an uncomfortable strain in your lower back. And if you find yourself mesmerized by the person in front of you on any of these workouts, youre probably lifting your head.
The biggest problems on loaded carries arrived when the weight is held to one side, as in a suitcase carry. Mistakes might include :P TAGEND
Bending to the side holding the weight
Overcompensating for the weight by bending to the opposite side
Leaning back and flaring your rib cage out
You can self-correct the first two issues by paying attention. If youre sober, you should be able to tell if youre standing up straight-out. If its a struggle, lower the weight.
A good self-check for the latter problem is to place your non-weight-bearing hand on your sternum. If you feel your bottom ribs start to move forward, adjust your posture.
Cognitive failure
Return for a moment to the confused female at the lat-pulldown station, the one pulling the bar down to her hips. Clearly, she didnt understand that the goal of the exert is to engage muscles in her middle and upper back, and to do that she needed to select a somewhat challenging weight and pull the bar to her chest.
I recollected it because its not something you find every day.
But there are a few usually misunderstood workouts youll find on a regular basis. Tumminello mentioned the dangling knee raise. As ab workouts go, its about as hard-core as most of us will ever get. But thats the problem: Most of us cant actually do the exert correctly.
To do it right, Tumminello told, you need to tilt your pelvis upward, something thats hellaciously difficult from a dead hang. Instead, most guys will merely lift their knees, a motion that works the hip-flexor muscles on the front of the pelvis but doesnt run the rectus abdominis, the six-pack muscle, through the intended range of motion.
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38 Dumbbell Exercises Youve Probably Never Seen If you cant do that pelvic tiltand as I told, few of us canthen youre much better served by doing the reverse crunch from the floor or an incline bench.
Another common mistake involves workouts for the opposite side of the torso. When you do a kettlebell sway, the goal is to move the weight by straightening your hips. That engages the powerful glute and hamstring muscles. Your arms and shoulder are only along for the ride.
But in order to be allowed to straighten your hips, you have to load them by pushing them backwards. If you dont do that, you cant generate the force necessary to swaying the weight out in front of you. Thats why you find so many people turn the swing into a front raise: theyll various kinds of squat down, and then pull the weight up overhead employing their shoulder muscles.
A good sway, by contrast, should end up somewhere between waist and chest height. One way to tell if youre get it right: the bell runs merely a little higher than your hands at the opening of the sway. If youre lifting it with your arms and shoulders, itll do the opposite, and end up below your hands.( For a full tutorial on how to do the exert, check out The Right Way to Do a Kettlebell Swing .)
How to do any exert better
The lessons of these nine exerciseslateral raise, bent-over row, timber, pushup, bear crawling, loaded carry, lat pulldown, hanging knee raise, kettlebell swingcan be applied to any exert you try. You merely need to ask yourself three topics :P TAGEND 1. What is the point of the exert ?
If the goal is to build muscle, then focus on making tension in the targeted muscles, and dont utilize momentum to blow through that the members of the exercise.
2. What should my body look like while doing the exert ?
This is trickier, because on many workouts its hard to check your form without breaking form to look at yourself. And thats only if you have a mirror nearby. Without one, you have to pay attention to your bodys signals. If "youre feeling" a strain in your lower back on a timber or pushup, thats your cue to work on your alignment.
3. What actions should and shouldnt be involved ?
This is even trickier, and may require coaching, or at least some reading outside the gym. Most people looking at a kettlebell swaying would think the goal is to lift the weight up in front of you, so it constructs sense that youd use your arms and shoulders. If nobody tells you its all in the hips, how would you know?
Which brings me to perhaps the most reliable cue: When other lifters stop, gaze, and then shake their heads as they walk away, you can be pretty sure youre doing something wrong.
Lou Schuler is an award-winning journalist and contributing editor to Mens Health. Check out his new book Strong: Nine Workout Programs For Women to Burn Fat, Boost Metabolism, and Build Strength For Life, with coauthor Alwyn Cosgrove .
This article originally appeared on MensHealth.com .
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