Over the past few days, I’ve been talking about the importance of intensity in your training regimen in terms of continued progress and growth. I think there is a hierarchy of important training factors. Each is important in its own sense, but some are more important than others. In ascending order, they are:

  • form
  • Intensity
  • Weight

For example, you should never sacrifice form to lift more weight. However, you should lift as much as you can on each lift while maintaining proper form to increase the intensity of your workout.

People sacrifice form when lifting weights for two reasons: either to modify range of motion to make the lift easier, or to build momentum to start the weight on an upward trajectory from rest.

If you studied physics in high school, you may remember that Newton’s second law states that an object at rest tends to remain at rest unless acted on by an external force. The hardest part of any lift is getting the weight to move. Even if you’re pushing a weight up at a snail’s pace, you still have some upward momentum and thus become a bit easier to lift because it requires less force just to keep the weight moving than it does to make the weight move. weight moves from rest.

(I’m an engineer by day. I live for this!)

Some people develop a bad habit of swinging parts of their body to build momentum to initiate a lift. It is very common to see people swinging their entire torso while doing bicep curls, bouncing weights off their chest while bench pressing, lifting their legs while doing pull-ups, etc. By doing this, you are de-emphasizing the target muscles. If you’re trying to curl 50 pounds, but you’re swinging your whole body to lift the weight, how much of the 50 pounds are you lifting with your biceps?

As a general rule, nothing should move beyond the main pivot point of your lift. Your hips definitely shouldn’t move during any lift, unless you’re performing a leg lift. As you do a bicep curl, keep your elbows close to your sides. As soon as your elbows begin to slide forward, you’re engaging your shoulder muscles and de-emphasizing your biceps. It can also be helpful to lean against a wall to keep your back from moving.

The next time you hit the gym, analyze your form for each lift you do to make sure you’re going through a full range of motion and not building momentum. When you cheat in an elevator, you are only cheating yourself!