Here’s Why Proper Form and Technique Matters – Avoid These Common Mistakes

Dedicating time to learn proper form and technique is the best investment you can make for your fitness and health journey. 

Once you learn it, your body will adapt to it every time and lift, run, or clean the room without putting your body in discomfort.

Especially with weightlifting, form and technique become twice as important, since the heavier the weight, the bigger the tension put into our body. Performing each exercise correctly will allow you to ripe the benefits of any physical activity.

As a definition, technique is the way you perform an exercise to target specific muscles, such as the grip of the barbell, body incline, etc. Form is about placing your body in a solid position to prevent injury and chronic pain.

Luckily, learning proper technique and form is now more accessible than ever, through reading articles online or hiring a personal trainer to assist you.

Why Does Proper Form and Technique Matter?

Our body is highly adaptive to resistance, pressure, and tension, and once it learns a particular way to move, it sticks to it. Constantly correcting your form and technique is just as important as showing up for your workouts.

Many people feel constant lower back, shoulder, or joint pain and do nothing about it.

That’s why you should strive to improve the alignment of your body during physical activity to achieve optimal results. 

3 Main Reasons to Dedicate Time to Learn Proper Form and Technique:

1. Decrease the Risk of Injury, Pain, and Chronic Illnesses

Incorrect form and technique might lead to spinal, muscular, and neurological problems. And you don’t need to be lifting heavily to hurt your body. Even incorrect crunches are more than enough to give you chronic pain all your life.

Rounding your back during the Deadlift pressures the spinal discs and might lead to their herniation. Or the improper stance and positioning of the feet might lead to knee problems. 

Recovering from these issues is long and tiring, so it’s better to keep your form in check and understand how your body feels during workouts.

2. Compensation for Other Weaker Muscles and Joints

Working out in the wrong form and technique will lead to muscle and joint compensation. Even if you don’t feel discomfort, joint and muscular problems might eventually show up. Looking shredded is not always a sign of strength and athleticism.

By training with a half range of motion, and not trying different techniques, we leave weak muscles and joints to suffer the consequences.

If you have constant sores or tightness in just a muscle, it often means that it is compensating for weaker ones. For example, feeling pain in the clavicula when performing triceps dips is another compensation that we need to correct.

3. Enhance Your Performance and Progress

Proper form and technique will help you progress faster. A ton of people cannot do a pull-up, even though they might lift heavy in the gym, and that is because they can’t control the technique.

Proper form ensures that your body is stressed properly, and so it will respond to the resistance and grow from it.

After learning the proper motor mobility, you will be able to feel the muscles working and how your body responds healthily and enjoyably to resistance and mobility.

5 Crucial Elements to Pay Attention for Proper Form and Technique

1. Stance- Foot Positioning

Many people don’t even think about their feet, even though that’s the endpoint where all the force gets absorbed. 

Body alignment starts from the ground up. And if you don’t stabilize and work on your stance, you increase the risk of injury, compensation, and discomfort.

Your feet should be able to absorb all the force and not compensate it in your knees or ankles. Moreover, if you suffer to keep your stance stable, this is a sign you have to lower the lifted weight.

The proper technique to walk is from heel to toe. This way your heel hits the ground first, absorbing most of the shock. 

Second, keep the foot arch intact by evenly distributing the force to your heel and feet ball. 

2. Breathing

Breathing is crucial during physical activity because it helps you create more force, while also decreasing the risk of heart problems, blood pressure, and aneurysms. 

A rule of thumb is to inhale during your lift and exhale while lowering the weight. Maintain a steady pace of breathing for every rep and set. 

Avoid breathing heavily with your mouth because you will get more oxygen than you need, overloading your brain and muscles. Hyperventilation will make you feel more tired and have less power to continue working out for longer.

3. Proper Hand Placement

Different exercises have their proper form for hand placement that intends to hit specific muscle parts, such as push-ups, deadlifts, handstands, etc. 

Most of the exercises might require a shoulder-width placement of the hands.

Grip the barbell or dumbbell by keeping your thumbs and fingers wrapped fully around the bar. For healthy joints you have to keep your back of your hand in line with your forearm and keep it stable.

4. Core Strength

Remember that even isolated exercises engage more than one muscle, so your whole body should be aligned correctly. In all standing, sitting, or laying exercises we need to activate the core by tightening it. The core is what keeps our body together.

If you lack this core control, it means you lack the strength, and your body will sway during your exercise which is not good news for the muscles, bones and ligaments.

The healthiest exercises for core strength are stability movements. Even though dynamic abdominal movements might seem efficient, they might bring problems with your spine which stability movements do not.

5. Neck Position

When you’re watching your form on the side of your gym mirror, remember you are not watching your form, because you are compromising your spinal health.

Always remind yourself to lengthen your neck and keep your chin tucked in. Avoid looking at the sides or moving your neck during the exercises.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Your Form and Technique

It’s never too late to start checking and improving your form and technique, so try to do these corrections right where you are right now and see how you feel:

• Shoulders down and back.
• Lift your chest up.
• Align your spine with your pelvis.
• Lengthen your neck and tuck your chin in.
• Pull your belly button up and in.
• Tighten your glutes.
• Make the connection between your brain and muscle.