Doing It Right

If you're going to take the time to do a particular exercise, please do it right. What's the point of doing something if you're just going to half ass it and show a total disregard for form? What benefit are you going to get out of it? Take a golf swing for example. If you're not going to focus on swing mechanics, chances are you're going to be spraying the ball all over the golf course and have other golfers running for cover. Now, apply the same concept to the exercises in your training routine. Sure you're moving and sure you're burning some calories. But you're not going to get the complete benefit of the exercise and may be even setting your self up for injury. And I love it when someone tells me how easy a particular exercise is and then I watch them execute the exercise without any emphasis on performing the movement properly. You can make any exercise easy if you don't focus on parts one, two and three of the exercise and move at warp speed. Two examples are step ups and push ups. Two exercises that seem fairly simple, right? I'll watch 10 people do a step up and I bet 9 of them do it wrong. In fact, I bet these 9 people are launching off their down foot and back leg in the bottom position, when they should be pulling the toes of that back leg up. Pulling those toes up will negate a push off from that back leg and place all the emphasis on the front or up leg, where it should be. And you'd think it be pretty hard to screw up a push up, right? Wrong. I watch hips sag and I watch hips hike in the air. I'm not referring to third graders either. I'm talking about 30 year old men. If either of those issues is happening, it tells me your core is to weak to stabilize your spine in a neutral position and or maybe you're just to lazy to execute the exercise properly. I actually hope it's the form rather than the later, so at least we can work on exercise progression. It's not as hard to get someone to work on exercise progressions as it is to stop someone from being lazy.