FORM IS OVERRATED

I am ready to slaughter the sacred cow on this one, because I’m honestly just getting sick of this.  Go onto any lifting forum on any website, and I guarantee you that within the first 2 pages of posts, you’re going to find a form check thread, and that’s on a slow board.  On a highly trafficked one, you’re going to see many of the threads on the first page are dedicated to form checks.  Videos will take one of two possible directions, the first being some kid who clearly has no basic understanding of how to lift in the first place and should be spending more time working on GPP than hitting the iron, and the second being someone freaking out about the most minor of details in their form.

This is time that could be spent doing chin ups...or dragging a sled...or going for a run...or doing taxes, or just anything

For the former, my advice is to start over.  Build some coordination and strength and start working some basic motor patterns.  This stuff isn’t complicated, it just requires some athleticism.  To the latter, I say stop checking your form and start lifting.  Form is never going to be perfect, and if it is, you’re lifting too light.  Any activity that is building strength is going to require you to venture out of your comfort zone, and this means experiencing minor form deviations.  If you spend all of your time worrying about these deviations and refusing to add weight until everything is 100% perfect, you will never get big or strong.

This need for absolute perfection in form stems from the crippling fear of injury that exists in a population that is undertrained and overstressed.  These people do not understand the reality that this is a lifelong pursuit, and that no one is going to make it out of this alive.  Everyone is going to get hurt at one point, and it’s your ability to come back from it that makes you a champion.  You’re never going to have form that is so perfect that you are injury free, and if you do, it will have come at the cost of actually lifting heavy enough weights to have an impact on your physique and strength.

Pictured with: torn left calf, torn right quadriceps, torn left pec, torn left lat, separated right acromioclavicular joint, two detached biceps tendons, torn his right and left tricep and numerous back injuries

There is always some resident “form expert” on each forum as well, dedicated to pointing out how someone’s left big toe is out of alignment with their right earlobe, reducing maximal power output by at least 17%.  These guys never look impressive, nor do they lift impressive amounts.  The time that they invested in becoming the greatest expert on youtube in diagnosing lifting dysfunction came at the cost of moving heavy iron and experiencing agony.  There is no prize in having the greatest internet form, and your accomplishments will be invisible to anyone who meets you.

When it comes to the helpfulness of strangers, whether they be on the internet or otherwise, understand that you are simply hearing the physical and verbal manifestation of cognitive dissonance and defense mechanisms.  No one “corrects” your form because they want you to succeed and be a better and stronger trainee.  They do this because it is how THEY train, and they do not want to witness someone succeeding employing a method that is different from their own, for the ramification of this reality is that THEY may be wrong.  Rather than change their perspective and admit to their own fallibility, it is much easier to attempt to change everyone else to their own paradigm.  When receiving the wisdom of strangers, measure their success before you give weight to their words.

Let us not confuse form with technique, and many are want to do.  The idea exists in the mind of the uneducated that somehow, when all the mechanical aspects of the lift come into alignment, one will be able to affect all the desired muscles and reach the intended outcome of a lift.  Bull, if you aren’t making the muscles work, you aren’t working the muscles.  I can curl a barbell from my waist up to my shoulders with a straight back and totally end up neglecting my biceps through the process, and conversely I can “cheat” and only curl the bar halfway while absolutely destroying my arms.  In many cases, “perfect” form dictates imperfect results, as it’s not simply about what the body looks like while it moves and object, but how it moves to create that image.

On this topic, let us understand that “textbook form” is a farce.  There is no possibility for there to be a universal “good form”, because such a notion presupposes a specific goal on every trainee on the planet.  It operates under the notion that every trainee that puts a bar on their back and squats does so for the same reason.  Is it not the case that powerlifters, strongmen, weightlifters, crosssfitters and bodybuilders squat, and that each one is going to squat differently than the other in most cases?  How about differently constructed trainees?  What of the powerlifter who is squatting to develop stronger quads versus the one who squats for a stronger posterior chain?  Do they employ the same form simply by nature of the fact that the lift is named “squat”?  Form will always be dependent on goal and individual, and as such the notion of a universal “good form” is laughable.

And when is the last time you associated  the word "textbook" with "strength"?

 Additionally, have some faith in yourself and your body.  It is rarely the case that you perform a movement 100,000 times with no pain and one day your spine shoots out through your anus because you had “bad form” the whole time.  Warning signs can show themselves, and it is up to you to interpret them and adjust as needed.  On the other side, if you are constantly in pain while training, and everyone tells you that you have “good form”, stop listening to insanity and start saving yourself.


It ultimately will always come down to the end result.  Are you meeting your goals with your method?  If yes, then the form check is meaningless, as clearly your form is working, regardless of how it appears.  If no, try some honesty before you seek the aid of others.  Can you honestly not see something wrong with your form before you ask outside sources?  With the wild availability of information provided by the internet and others, are you still lost?  How did the pioneers of lifting manage without youtube?  Maybe that is why so many of them managed to get big and strong without worrying about mobility work and long warm-ups, but that is another rant, for another time.  

THE FORM CHECK: TREATING THE SYMPTOMS AND IGNORING THE DISEASE

It is without hyperbole that I say the internet form check is responsible for retarding the progress of the majority of trainees online today.  Trainees who could have spent years making amazing gains in the gym and reaching phenomenal and impressive levels of size and strength have instead been regulated to years of staying at light weights, striving for absolutely perfect form, failing, restarting at lower weights, and repeating the process over and over again.  People have now become so completely paranoid about the slightest hint of back rounding, elbow flaring, shallow depth, etc etc that we seemed to have forgotten that all of this was simply a means to achieve a goal: getting bigger and stronger.  Instead, we have now changed the means INTO the goal, with many trainees foolishly admiring the form a lifter employs in their training, rather than the results this form has achieved.

Let me be frank: seeking the advice of the internet on achieving your goals is seeking the advice of those who have failed on how to succeed.  The internet has FAR more failures inhabiting it than those who have managed success, and the advice you receive in turn will be on how to fail, not succeed.  It is the blind leading the blind, and if you are lucky you may accidentally have someone parrot actual good advice from a legitimate source, but for the most part everything accepted as dogma is simply perversions and mutations of actual good advice.  The loudest voice online is the least successful.

The absence of a counter argument in many cases simply indicates a lack of need

On this topic, those who contribute advice and critique to form checks are simply those regurgitating what they have been told is good advice.  In turn, all they simply do is state the obvious.  “Your back is rounding”, “you have buttwink (which, by the way, hearing someone say “buttwink” is a great way to know that they aren’t strong)”, “your knees are caving in”, etc etc.  These statements are useless.  It would be akin going to the doctor with a cold and him telling you with full authority “Your nose is running, you have a slight cough, and are running a mild fever”.  Thanks Doc, how do we fix it?!

We laugh, but is it any better with a form check?

Herein is where we identify once again the deficiencies of this system.  In theory, the internet form check is a boon that allows us the useful observation of many other trainees with helpful advice.  In reality, the latter is missing, and the observation is far from useful.  These good Samaritans are finely skilled at the art of critique, but when it comes to knowing how to get bigger and stronger, they are lacking.  Nowhere is the contribution “your back is rounding BECAUSE your feet are too far apart”, or “your knees are caving in BECAUSE your feet aren’t angled out”, mainly because these fine denizens of the internet are clueless on how to actually succeed, and instead only know how to tear people down.

It is this talent at destruction that is in turn so pervasive and horrific within the internet community, which creates a culture where success is impossible.  Those that foolishly submit their form to the internet are admonished for any attempt to exert effort, told instead that they MUST reset the weight until they can meet some impossible standard of perfect form (which, coincidentally, is ONLY possible when using a weight that is too light to elicit any manner of physical change).  Ghost stories and legends are told of experiencing “snap city”, “snapping your shit up”, and other such drivel that is once again only ever said by someone who has failed to accomplish anything impressive.  The trainees that post on these videos have not only never experienced success, but in many cases have never even experienced an injury to even know WHAT it feels like when form deviates so bad as to result in one.  They have lived a life of such extreme deluded paranoia that they have no frame of reference for what it means to even train.  And they speak in such masses with such volume that any attempt to preach sanity, effort, toil and hard work is immediately drowned out as dangerous.

Strong people encourage effort, weak people discourage it

When met with examples of highly successful trainees using form that is not what has been deemed as “safe”, all manner of excuses come out.  Genetics, drugs, experience, “advanced techniques”, whatever the case may be. As an intelligent reader, surely you can deduce from this that the ONLY people that are following the “safe form” are the unsuccessful trainees, and the successful people seem to be following the unsafe form.  Knowing this, whose approach seems worth emulating?

Allow me to offer my own universal approach to form critiques.  Odds are, if your form is failing, it’s because your set up is poor.  Many trainees falsely diagnose inability to maintain a strong position with a weakness in the muscles that support said condition, but truth be told, I have never seen someone unable to keep a neutral back due to a weak back.  Instead, they simply never put themselves into a position wherein they could even effectively RECRUIT the muscles necessary to maintain good posture.  If you videotape your lift and notice an issue with execution, you have already identified what the internet would have told you about your form.  Now it is up to you to play around with how you put yourself in the position to execute the movement, watch others with levers similar to yours, and find out where the discrepancies exist.

There is no universal cure for “back rounding”, but I know an easy fix for “feet too far apart”.

WHY ABBREVIATED TRAINING (STARTING STRENGTH, STRONGLIFTS, 5X5, ETC) FAILS: PART II

For those of you that missed Part I, you can find it here

http://mythicalstrength.blogspot.com/2014/05/why-abbreviated-training-starting.html

3: Trainees are too fixated on form, not enough on intensity.

I have already slaughtered the sacred cow that is “good form” in previous rants, but I will re-emphasize that point here: beginning trainees are way too concerned about exercise form.  Part of this stems from reason number 1 (and in fact, I contend that all of these will most likely be sub-reasons, with #1 being the primary cause of all issues), in that trainees are learning coordination and balance while they are also learning how to lift, which is a recipe for disaster.  The lifts feel awkward not because the techniques are difficult, but because the trainee themselves is awkward.  Additionally, trainees are conditioned to believe that the lifts involved in an abbreviated program are “dangerous”, and that perfect form must be used at all times or else they will get injured.

No matter how good your form is, you aren't safe here

This again leads me into another rant I have already covered, but the inherent fear of injury and aversion trainees have to it is one of the primary reasons they never meet success in a program.  One has to understand that an injury is not the end of one’s training career, and that almost every injury is recoverable in some fashion.  When one learns to not fear injuries, and instead accept them and move on, they will find themselves able to push much harder in training, and in turn encounter far more success.  In contrast, one who fixates far too much on perfect form is simply not going to lift heavy enough to elicit a response from their body.  Strain is necessary for progress, and strain necessitates form deviation.  Lack of deviation is lack of strain, which is lack of progress.

"No way you're going to get big with THAT form dude.  Better deload to the bar and start over with perfect form."

New trainees need to spend less time on the internet, having form gurus telling them to deload to the bar and start over with perfect form every time they see “butt wink” in a squat.  In addition, trainees should stop saying the term “butt wink”, because it’s stupid, and not a real thing to be worried about.  Lower backs round, upper backs round, knees cave in, elbows flare, stuff happens.  Some guy squatting 225 with “perfect form” is never an impressive physical specimen, whereas a guy that can man handle 700lbs on their back in the ugliest, god awful form possible is going to look like a beast, and have the tenacity and attitude to match.  Should one endeavor to have safe form?  Yes, absolutely.  Should one endeavor to have good form?  No.  The two are not the same, as the latter presupposes a universality of how a movement should look without taking into consideration the individual variances of a lifter, to include height and limb length/proportion.  Be strong enough to control the weight rather than have the weight control you, but also strive to push yourself hard enough to actually elicit a response from your body.

4:  They deviate from the program for the wrong reasons, and stick with the program when it is not advantageous.

This is one of the more odd things I witness beginners doing, and ultimately I attribute it to not wanting to really push themselves hard and trying to find easier ways of doing things.  In many cases, it’s simply because a trainee lacks any sort of athletic background, and has never had the experience where they just forced themselves to get better through sheer willpower, and instead they think they can outthink a problem.

Trainees will add any sort of flavor of the month to an already established program because they read some article somewhere that promised them ripped abs and 2” on their arms in 6 weeks with just one movement.  All of a sudden, they’re throwing in spider curls, the shoulder shocker, leg extension drop sets, the entire “300 Workout”, HIIT, etc etc.  Basically, movements or protocols that have no business being in their gameplan make their way in, and eventually become to real focus of their training, while the core of the program is more that thing they have to do before they get to have fun.  When your heart is no longer invested in the stuff that is going to make the biggest changes, you aren’t going to experience them.  This isn’t to say that trainees cannot possibly modify programs due to the grim specter of overtraining or some other such nonsense, but more the fact that beginners on abbreviated training programs tend to make really dumb changes to the program for reasons they don’t fully understand which in turn undermine their own efforts.

"Yeah, I'm basically following Starting Strength with a few modifications"

Comically enough, these same trainees who hold no reverence for the program when it comes to adding movements and protocols to the program will desperately cling to the tenets of the program whenever they find themselves stalling.  One constantly witnesses cases of a beginner lifter reporting that they have stalled on a lift for months at a time and wanting to know what they should do.  They’ll talk about how they have deloaded, reset, improved form, thrown in assistance work as above, etc etc, with no avail.  However, if one suggests that they do more work sets of the movement to get a greater stimulus, one discovers that these trainees don’t want to “mess with the program”.  Starting Strength is 3x5, and by God there is NO way someone is going to do 4x5 on Starting Strength, of 3x5, 1x20, or any other possibility that involves doing more heavy work.  These trainees instead are going to just keep going to the gym, loading up the bar with the same weight they used last session, do the exact same 3x5, and then wonder why they aren’t progressing.

These trainees need to understand that the body will not adapt without adequate stressors, and as so soon as they train the body to accept a certain level of stimulus as baseline, it will feel no need to get stronger when it experiences that stimulus.  Thus, accepting stagnation is the absolute worst thing a trainee following an abbreviated program can do.  If the weight isn’t moving, do SOMETHING to progress.  Cut down the rest times, add more sets, add more reps, just find some way to have growth from session to session while still hitting the lifts that are going to make you bigger and stronger.  Many times, the solution to getting a stuck squat moving isn’t something sexy like pulling a sled or throwing in sets of exotic assistance exercises, but instead something as brutal as squatting even more.  If a trainee is stalling and the program isn’t working, refusing to change the program is refusing to get stronger.