Practice makes perfect: Unless you perfect your mistakes

With the gym filled by the January rush of newly committed fitness devotees, Im seeing many new and creative ways to perform the three power lifts.

Making physical errors in a complex lift is most obvious when seeing people with limited experience do their best to approximate what they think they saw on some training video.

However, those of us who have been around for a while can fall into smaller faults and flaws without realizing it.

Perfect powerlifting technique is very difficult to repeat week after week and month after month. Tiny errors creep in unseen and begin to diminish our best efforts.

Practice in this case can perfect our flawed technique

Unless.

 

Mental Errors

Some people adopt ideas without thinking about them or trying to assess whether the idea is valid.

In the fitness arena dogmatic and uncritical adherence to different versions of the truth lead the adherents to follow certain diets, supplement program, or workout protocols without ever looking at questions like: why would this work? or how does this work?, etc.

Simple rote learning means near zero understanding.

Rote learning can lead to following training advice that is similar to the classic if you want to grow taller, play basketball. Only tall people play basketball..look at the data!

 

Corrections and Calibrations

Social media provides an opportunity to get a blizzard of factoids that may lead down the proverbial rabbit hole or into fantasyland.

Training partners and coaches who have broad experience can be an antidote to the drivel that can occasionally blow you off course.

Often such experienced people are not around when it would be most convenient to consult with them.

Thus, often we are left to our own devices to figure out how to prevent learning the wrong stuff.

Here is where doing videos of yourself performing a serious lift can be highly valuable.

Get someone to shoot videos of you doing a 95% effort lift. You wont likely make technique mistakes with lighter weights.

Shoot from at least three different perspectives.

For example, in the squat one video should be done from the side and taken precisely at hip level. This is the only way you will see issues related to your depth.

One vid should be shot directly in front of you at waist height from about 10-15 feet away. This will reveal alignment issues, balance, uneven push out of the bottom and many other small things that may be messing up your power train.

Finally, shoot a video that captures every move you make from the time the referee calls bar is loaded until you complete a full squat. This captures everything your do in setting up, lifting off the rack, stepping back, and doing the squat.

There might be something you habitually do that you had never thought about. You may have been overlooking this foible for monthsor years.

You can be your own diagnostician.

 

Help from Others

If you are fortunate enough to have an excellent powerlifter around it is well worth your time to see if you can get some outside input.

The key question to ask is what can I do better? This gives the person free rein to comment about any aspect of your training and lifting technique.

The answers may surprise you.

 

Coda

Powerlifting is a deceptively difficult sport. Few people appreciate the minute nuances that make such a big difference.

If you are going to put in all the hard work, it is always cool to get the highest value for your effort.

Lift Big!

Richard