Correct Your Technique to Reduce Failures!
The body, its joints, and the muscles that work around each joint are designed to work together for optimal performance. If you have been working on complex movements (full body such as squat, deadlifts, cleans, snatches, etc) and do not understand what each joint should be doing to perform as best as possible, then there is strength gains being left out that could be attained!
Let me ask you this…
Do you find yourself failing during a lift where you feel like you are not quite at muscle fatigue but your body quits suddenly? If you are not using the correct technique during your lift and using your muscles to hold your joints in proper position, your nervous system will shut you down to prevent injury. Mind blown, right? We see this a lot on max effort attempts where the failure happens abruptly but it does not make any sense why it should not have been a successful lift.
Do you have a hard time targeting the ideal muscle groups for a specific lift? Trouble feeling your pectoral muscles on bench, or the glutes on squat, or when you deadlift do you only feel it in your lower back? This is a huge indicator that your technique needs adjustment either overall or simply understanding where you need to position your body during loaded movement to engage the correct muscle groups.
Do you leave your workouts feeling aches and pains and like something is seriously wrong? Again… there is most likely nothing wrong with your body, but probably something wrong with your technique!
Let’s consider the bench press… the most common fault seen in the bench press is lack of controlling the scapula (shoulder blades). There is a correct position for the scapula in order to have true stability and strength, and this is when they are depressed, or away from the head. A huge misuse of the arch on bench press is simply to reduce the range of motion (although this can help individuals to some degree), but in reality what is happening is that the arch helps depress the scapula down where they are the most stable. If you find yourself shrugging up to your ears with your shoulders during the bench press movement you are making a fatal error! This is not a stable position for the shoulder and will result in premature failure of the lift and possibly injury as well. The shoulder is the most important joint in the bench press, but really the whole body position is vital to true bench pressing success!
In every lift, you must understand the proper positioning for each part of the body from your toes to your head to make the best of every rep! If you do not understand the correct technique and cues for proper loaded movement then you must learn them immediately, or anticipate many frustrating max out days! Also, PR’s feel so much better when you are lifting correctly!
Ryan Sensenig