By Miguel J. Ortiz
When someone lifts significantly more than they should, this has been recognized as ego lifting, something that is absolutely phasing out and getting more unpopular. However, we continue to see the poor form or wild unnecessary lifting done by plenty of people on the Internet.
Don’t get me wrong, pushing yourself appropriately has many benefits, its why we set goals, but we need to make sure we are not skipping steps. We must take smart methodical progressions to achieve one’s overall goal. One of the best things you can do is focus on how you lift, don’t compare to what someone else is doing – they all started somewhere. By focusing on how you lift the weight, you greatly reduce your chances of injury. It also helps you focus by increasing neuromuscular demand, which in turn, helps overall muscular gain.
Here are three important tips that will help your strength and overall quality of life. Keep in mind, by making some of these changes you may need to change the routine to meet the form demand.
- First, always lift with your legs and not just in the gym. If you have any lower body injuries, I wouldn’t hesitate to heal and strengthen that area first. If your core is the bricks to your home then the hips and legs are its foundation. And we don’t buy houses with cracks in the foundation, so let’s get active, stretch and do PT to get right. But nonetheless, this mindset applies to everything, the more you can focus on breathing properly while going through any hinging, squatting or bending motions to pick things up or go about your day will increase your awareness of general posture.
- Second, take a series of workouts and change the amount of time spent in the eccentric motion of the exercise. We want a 4 second eccentric focus followed but a full 1 second pause and then complete the rep. For all movements there is a concentric and eccentric part of the motion, the easy way to explain it is that concentric is against gravity and eccentric is with it. So, to use some exercises as an example. When squatting, 4 seconds on the way down, 1 second pause at bottom, 2 seconds on the way up. In training terminology, this is known as tempo and it would read, 0412, 0 meaning the starting position. During a bicep curl would be, 0214, the 4 at the end is the 4 seconds on the way down after you’ve curled the weight up. By focusing on working with gravity you focus on better form, posture, alignment, core engagement, etc. Also, there is plenty of research supporting the notion that eccentric-focused work builds muscle faster than moving faster to complete more reps. Quality over quantity.
- Lastly, increase your ability to breathe and brace through movement. Whether or not you get to a point where you are lifting as much as you can, the ability to brace your core is essential for all lifting. Daily breathing techniques will take you much further down your journey through fitness.
Make these a daily three must do’s and you will have more challenging workouts that your body will appreciate.
