How To Tell If You're Doing Your Strength Exercises Right
You’ve have your workout program. You’re in the gym. You’re following along with the exercises, but you’re not sure if you’re doing them correctly.
Am I squatting low enough? Are my hands in the right position? Am I using the right muscles? Does this look silly?
This is clearly wrong...
A lot of people aren’t sure exactly how to perform their exercises, and they don’t feel comfortable and confident while they’re doing them.
They have a hard time focusing on getting the most out of each exercise because they’re always wondering if they’re doing something wrong, how they look, or if someone is watching and judging them.
Learning how to do each exercise the right way, in other words with “good form”, is important for a couple of main reasons:
It ensures that you’re putting the target muscles under the right stress so they can get stronger and more defined.
It decreases your risk of injury.
To learn more about the science and importance of good form for getting results and preventing injury, read my article Here.
Learning and practicing good form is also essential for motivation and building consistent exercise habits.
How Does Your Exercise Form Relate To Your Motivation?
Imagine walking into a gym with the confidence that you know exactly what you’re doing. As you go through each exercise, you’re not worried that you’re doing it wrong, that you might be wasting your time or setting yourself up for injury, or that someone might be judging you. Your mind is clear and you feel sure of yourself.
That confidence can improve your motivation. In fact, confidence is one of the three major factors for building effective motivation to exercise, because it leads to enjoyment.
Exercise releases many substances in your brain (like endorphins, but also many others), that contribute to positive feelings and improved mood.
When you really enjoy exercising, it’s easy to work out. You want to do it, because your brain starts to crave those mood-boosting feelings.
When you don’t feel confident in your form or your ability, though, it dampens those mood-boosting effects. If you’re constantly worried about whether or not you’re doing it right, it’s harder to tap into those positive emotions.
Learn how to do each exercise correctly not only to get the maximum physical benefits, but also to unlock the mental benefits that can improve your motivation and help you build consistent exercise habits.
How To Learn Good Form For Each Exercise and Feel Confident In What You’re Doing
The best way to make sure you’re doing your exercise properly is to get the help of an expert who can watch you in real time and give you demonstrations and suggestions to improve your form. I can help with that! Contact me to find out about one-on-one training options.
If you want to try it on your own, here’s a step-by-step system:
Step 1: Watch a video of the exercise you’re trying to do. Learn the basic form points and the muscles it’s supposed to be targeting.
You can do a simple google search and find plenty of websites that host exercise directories with videos and instructions. Of course, you want to learn from someone who knows what they’re doing, which is not a guarantee when you do a simple google search.
Here are some reputable websites with free exercise libraries:
Step 2: Try an easy version of the exercise. For a dumbbell, barbell, or cable machine exercise, start with a comfortable weight. For a body weight exercise, scale it down to an easy version, like an incline push up or an assisted squat. You need to be focused on your form right now, not worrying about lifting heavy weights.
Practice what you saw in the exercise video.
Step 3: Watch how you move, using a mirror or by taking a video and watching it right afterwards. Compare it to the instruction video and look for any big differences between what you’re doing and the instructions.
Be aware that everyone’s form will look a little different, since everyone’s body is a little different. If your leg length or hip mobility is different than the person in the instructional squat video (and it almost certainly is), then your form will probably not look exactly like theirs. That’s ok. It doesn’t necessarily mean your form isn’t good.
Unfortunately, that makes it even trickier to know whether you’re doing the exercise right. Even trainers struggle with this.
I’ve seen well-intentioned trainers try to poke and prod their clients into “ideal” exercise form, not realizing that the client’s form might already be appropriate for the way their body is built and how it moves.
Since your form will be slightly different than what you see in the demonstration, don’t worry too much about small differences. Just look for any major issues.
Are your feet way too close together on your squat? Are your palms facing the wrong way on your dumbbell press? Are you shrugging your shoulders or rocking back at the waist during your seated rows when you should be keeping your upper body still and stable?
Correct those big things first.
Step 4: Once you know the basic form, focus on the target muscles. This is called building a “mind to muscle connection”.
Imagine the muscles that should be working during the exercise. Visualize them in your mind, and try to feel for them as you move.
For a push up, try to feel your chest and shoulders working. For a seated row, squeeze your shoulder blades together when you bring the handle in to your chest, and feel for your upper back muscles.
As with the “ideal” form for each exercise, this isn’t as straightforward as many people think. It’s much easier to feel the target muscles working on some exercises than others, depending on the exercise and the muscle group.
You can usually feel the right muscles on isolation exercises that work just one muscle group at a time, like bicep curls, much more clearly than during a compound exercise that works several muscle groups at once, like a squat.
Just because you don’t feel a burn or squeeze in a particular muscle, that doesn’t mean it’s not working. Even if you can’t feel it right away, focus on visualizing the target muscles working. You’ll get better at feeling for the right muscles as you practice.
Step 5: Once you can see that you’re doing the main things correctly and are in the habit of imagining the target muscles working, start practicing “owning the movement”.
When you “own the movement”, it means you feel confident and in control of your body and the weight at all times.
This is the key to knowing whether you’re doing the exercise right: how smooth and controlled your movement is and how confident you feel in the way you move.
That’s what I look for when I train clients. Once I check off the obvious things, I start watching for speed, momentum, control, and fluidity.
If you’re moving too fast, you’re probably not focusing on the correct muscles. I often have to ask clients to slow down and really feel for what they’re doing.
Moving too fast means you’re probably also using momentum to move your body or the weights. That should never happen, you should always be in full control.
Even when you’re lowering your body (like when you descend into a squat), or lowering the weights (like when you straighten your arms to bring a dumbbell towards the floor in a bicep curl), you should never just drop them down, you should be able to lower the weights or your body slowly and under control.
At any point during the exercise, you should actually be able to stop cold and hold that position, without feeling like you’re going to lose your balance or lose control of the weights.
You should also be able to move smoothly. You shouldn’t look shaky or wobbly, and you should be moving at a pretty constant speed the whole time.
Feel for these things as you move, and look for them in the mirror or in your video.
Step 6: Start tracking your movement confidence. After each set, rank your confidence level from 1-10. A rating of 1 would be not at all confident and a 10 would be 100% confident that you were in complete control and able to move slowly and steadily throughout every second of the exercise, while focusing on the right muscles.
Write those numbers down, and keep practicing each exercise with light weights until you get to a 9 or 10 out of 10 on the confidence scale.
At that point, you own the movement! Now you can start adding more weight or doing a more challenging version of the exercise, and get all the amazing benefits of strength training and the confidence that comes with it.