Dare to Self Improve

So I talked a lot about form yesterday, but what is good form? Well it’s hard for me to describe in writing since each exercise is different, but if you’re a novice, I recommend that you consult a personal trainer once or twice to get the form down. Or you can do what I did (the long road) and screw around for a while until you finally realize what good form is.

First of all, no matter the exercise, you need to make sure you are fully controlling the weight the entire time. You don’t want a lot of momentum involved (which occurs when you jerk or throw the weight). FULLY CONTROL THE WEIGHT! Secondly, learn what muscles should be primarily worked during each exercise and concentrate on using only those muscles, while keeping all other muscles rigid and flexed for stability. For example, when doing bench presses, focus on slowly bringing the weight down above the middle of your chest, then pressing the weight up by squeezing your pecs, and to a lesser extent, your triceps.

When performing reps, focus on the decentric motion (bringing the weight back to rest) as well as the concentric (pressing the weight to the point where your muscles are fully flexed). Don’t let the weight simply fall to rest. For beginers, a good start would be 1 second “up” (ie pressing the barbell from your chest, or pulling the bar up for bicep curls) and 3 seconds “down” (lowering the bar back to your chest or bringing the bar down from a curl).

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