Using the correct form is one of the most critical aspect of muscle building. The form (or technique) you use while doing the exercises, plays an important role in how fast you make muscle gains and how much impact those gains will have on your overall performance.
In this article I have tried to give a complete explanation as to –
What is form?
Most effective way to treat it? and
How correcting faults in your form will benefit you instantly.
What is an Exercise Form?
Perfect form can be measured and classified into 2 groups as listed below:
1) Use of correct Range Of Motion :
ROM stands for the range or distance that a muscle travels through, while doing a particular exercise. Some exercises like “the barbell squat” has a very large range while other exercises like “the bent over dumbbell tricep kickback” has a shorter range of motion.
Now imagine an exercise’s range of motion as a long road, the distance you walk along that road directly affects the number of things you see and the experiences you gain.
Exactly the same may be said about your muscles. The larger the range of motion you use, the more muscular fibers you recruit for the job and therefore stimulate them.
The only difference if any is that a muscle will have different peak points of stimulation along that range of motion. These peak points are areas of stimulation which enforces much more isolation on a particular muscle group than other parts of the muscle’s range.
Simply put, you should do ‘full range of motion’ exercises, to stimulate an entire muscles range and should also include some partial R-O-M exercises, like half reps or static reps to further isolate the individual muscle groups while training.
2) Maintainance of exercise safety and remaining free of injuries.
It is but natural for weight training to cause much more stress to the internal organs, muscles, bones, joints, ligaments and cartilage. Because of this it might take them to critical levels of stress above which cannot be handled by the body, causing damage and injury.
Not using correct forms of exercises when training with weights is the most common reason for injuries and can be avoided easily with the application of some basic principles into your exercises.
Controlling your movements when under ‘hyperextension’ is very important.
note: When a muscle and its surrounding structures are taken past their normal range of motion, it is known as Hyperextension.
Most of the common weight lifting exercises applies a little hyperextension to reach the full range of motion.
For Example:
a) Hyperextension of the Shoulder – Barbell / Dumbbell bench press of fly’s
b) Hyperextension of the Knee – Leg extensions / straight leg deadlifts
c) Hyperextension of the Elbow – Bicep preacher curl / tricep extensions
d) Hyperextension of the Spine – Barbell Deadlift / Lying rear leg raises
As you can see even the most common exercises may cause injury, so make sure you follow a few simple rules when taking your muscles into hyperextension :
1) Always make sure that your muscle movement is slow, controlled and deliberate.
2) Never use extreme force when in hyperextension. Use force to get to the point just before hyperextension and then slow down your movement.
3) If you have an injury to a muscle (might be previous or current), don’t take it to the point of hyperextension. Otherwise, you will be risking repeated injury or causing further damage to the muscle.
So if you are not achieving the results you expect from your training schedule, a good question to ask yourself is whether you are using correct forms of the exercises?
Well, if your techniques are taking each muscle through its full range of motion and you are in total control of the weight throughout the range and more importantly through hyperextension, then the answer is YES!
But if you are swinging excessively during an exercise – using excessive momentum, you are using other muscle groups to assist the lift. This increases your chances of injury and also takes away valuable stimulation from the muscle you are actually targeting.
So, if you are not getting results from your muscle training schedule, perhaps it is time to rectify your exercise forms.
With dedication and proper knowledge of training, you can easily improve both how you look and how you perform.