Form Storm

The worse thing you want to do while engaging in healthy activities is to get hurt.  You are trying to do your body good by exercising right? Well let’s do it correctly so the body can fully benefit from the work you are doing.  You don’t like getting cheated when spending money do you? Well your body doesn’t want to be cheated when expending energy either.

I’m not your mother so I’m not going to tell you to be careful.  Once again I will give you the knowledge to be smart about your exercise instead.  That being said, form is one of the major factors of injury prevention in exercise.  To be form conscious you want to be sure you are performing the exercises properly in order to put your joints in position of least vulnerability.  The slightest degree of movement astray from the proper range of motion of the movement in question, especially in weight bearing exercises, can lead to negative consequences.  So if you have to go light with better form, DO IT, please.   With proper form you are putting your body in a position to target and sometimes isolate the muscle that the exercise is intended for.  I am not going to list how to perform each and every exercise properly because, well, that would be insane.  However, I suggest you get a book or watch videos online and look at pictures online.  That being said let me clear up a few things about the information on the Internet.  The Internet is the equivalent of a gym.  There are lots of people in the gym, but not all of them are doing things correctly and sometimes even the trainers are misinformed (topic for further argument).  So, be wary of the Internet sites that you are getting your information from.  I highly suggest American College of Sports Medicine (www.acsm.com) or any other accredited fitness organization’s website.  Books on the other hand are a little less subjective in terms of accuracy simply because the book had to be published proofread, edited, etc. and well lets face it, anyone can put anything on the Internet, right or wrong, intelligent or stupid. 

In addition to form, focus is another thing you want to really hone in on when working out.  If you have trouble focusing when working out, then what you are doing in terms of “working out” must be too easy.  The work you are doing should be hard enough to engage your mind on the task at hand but not so hard that you are going to get hurt.  When concentrating on your movements in working out, especially in resistance training it is important to focus on two parts of the movement.  One, when the muscle is shortening, the concentric contraction, and two when the muscle is lengthening, the eccentric contraction.  If these terms don’t make since to you, equate the concentric contraction as the “up” motion and the eccentric contraction to the “down” motion.  Yes, some exercises are performed in a horizontal motion rather than a vertical motion but you get the point.  That being said and contrary to population belief, the muscle damage occurs during the eccentric contraction of the movement.  Why do you want muscle damage? Well this is what makes your muscle grow, respond and adapt.  I use the term grow sparingly for the women who read this article simply due to the fact that I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea about the idea of muscular grow which I discussed in previous blogs.  Anyways, so be conscious not only when raising or lifting the weight performing the concentric contraction of the movement but also when lowering the weight performing the eccentric contraction.  You don’t want to waste your time working out and not get the results you want.  I’m not saying focusing eccentric contraction is going to change your entire physique but I am saying that overall awareness of your body when performing exercise is going to help you to better perform the exercises and thus progress your fitness level as a whole.