If you walk into any gym in American on any given day you will see about 9 out of 10 people training using poor form and using improper movement. This is something I have been telling people for years now. So, I decided to write a blog article to let people know the importance of it and how improving your form and movement when you exercise will improve your results from the time you spend training. The problem though is the fact that most people don’t realize they are doing an exercise incorrectly. Unless someone has been taught how to do an exercise correctly by a personal trainer, strength coach or some other health or fitness professional they probably just learned to do certain exercises by watching someone else in the gym do it, by watching a social media video or by having a friend or someone else in the gym show them. This is how I learned as a young 14 year old boy playing high school football and following our high school football strength training program. No one ever taught us how to do all the exercises correctly. We all just learned by watching the other players do them. So, I know I wasn’t doing them all correctly because some of them were advanced exercises and if smart phones existed back then it would probably be laughable watching me perform all these exercises in our training program. I shouldn’t use the word laughable because myself and any of the other players could have gotten hurt while doing them incorrectly. The problem is by learning to do a particular exercise or how to exercise in general in any of these ways is you can learn to do perform exercises and train incorrectly and potentially get hurt or injured.
Hiring a personal trainer or strength coach is a great way to ensure you are using the correct form and with proper movement.
So, what are some of the potential downfalls or negatives to learning how to train and training incorrectly? There are a number of them. The biggest one is the potential to get hurt and injured. In a peer reviewed research study I read a few years ago it stated that exercise equipment related injuries are the number one cause of injury of any type of physical activity. It is greater than any sports related injuries including physical and sometimes violent sports including football and hockey. I would guess many of those injuries are due to to using the equipment incorrectly and using it with poor form and with improper movement.
A second reason is not recruiting or using the correct muscles and in the right pattern. Another thing I have said for years is that you could have two different people doing the exact same training program and each person could get a totally different training effect. If one person is using strict form and executing the exercises with proper movement they will get the most out of the time they are spending exercising. If the other person is using poor form and using improper movement they won’t get nearly the same training effect because they won’t be fully using and recruiting the right muscles. The type of training effect can be significant and over time can result in one person getting much better results then the other.
Another reason is working on and learning to improve your form and movement when training is a type of exercise progression. Any good training program needs to be progressive in nature to continue to get someone to whatever training goals they may have. There are many ways to progress in a training program including increasing the weight you are using on an exercise, the number of reps, the number of sets and progressing to a more challenging version of an exercise. Improving your form and movement is a type of progression in itself. It can result in continuing to get better and better results.
So, how can you learn how to perform exercises correctly, train correctly and ensure you are using proper form and movement? You can take a course in how to exercise and train correctly. There are many courses and certifications out there, even for beginners who knows nothing about exercise. A lot of the major companies that offer personal training certifications have courses on how to learn to strength/weight train. You could also hire a personal trainer or strength coach to teach you how to exercise and train correctly, even if it is just for a handful of sessions to ensure you are training correctly. You could also watch some videos on social media from respected organizations like the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), The National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) and the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) and a host of other prestigious, credible health and fitness organizations.
I can’t stress the importance of learning to exercise and train correctly using the correct form and with proper movement enough. It really is a game changer and that important to someone’s health and fitness.
Thank you for reading my blog article. I hope you found it helpful and informative. If anyone is interested in personal fitness training or sports performance training reach out to me via my email Dan@eidensfitness.com or you can contact me directly at 702-521-6012.
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