There is one thing even professional athletes and trainers tend to often underestimate or momentarily forget when it comes to training. Unfortunately, it is something that can severely affect your progress, therefore make or break all the hard-earned progress you’ve made. All those weeks, months out the window in the blink of a careless eye. Gone. And sometimes, even worse, it can affect your well-being. Today, we will go over the much-underrated importance of having proper form and technique when you are working out.
Before we start, let this be engraved in you: having proper form matters more than the amount of weight you are lifting.
The 1st reason you should train with proper form is the risk of an injury. There are numerous professional athletes whose careers came to a standstill because of serious injuries. One of the most recurring situations in most if not all gyms are ego lifting. This occurs when someone, to prove something to him/herself or someone else, lifts an amount of weight they’re not ready for, usually cheating through bad form and technique to do it. This can easily lead to injury, especially if done repeatedly. Of course, not everyone that lifts big weights or has bad form and technique fits in this category. Which is why good form and technique are not optional, but mandatory if you are serious enough to achieve progress and see results in the least amount of time possible.
And this is the 2nd reason you should always focus on your form: effectiveness. You may get away with bad form and technique for some time, but sooner or later if you haven’t hurt yourself, you will realize you’ve been setting yourself back considerably. Bad form and technique are so prevalent in fitness centres that when someone has been working for a significant amount of time and suddenly improves, they are shocked by how much they progress as compared to before.
The 3rd reason is efficiency. Doing every exercise with proper form means you will be targeting every muscle you are supposed to. This means you can achieve your full body’s potential when your body will be responding as it should, firing on all cylinders. Improper form places unnecessary stress in your organs and muscles, even affecting your breathing.
The 4th reason is economy. Having improper form also means your valuable energy goes to waste. And waste means you are also wasting time. Weight moved in a less efficient range of motion means that you are wasting energy. You can figure out what this means in the long run.
Finally, our 5th reason is just as important. Bad form and technique can lead you to end up frustrated by your lack of results, leading you to ponder whether becoming fitter and healthier is even worth it in the end. It can lead you to give up on something that has not only incredible physical benefits but also psychological in the short, medium and long term.
To keep this from happening, always look into not just your trainers’ qualifications, but make sure he or she looks after you and monitors your form and tracks your progress. In the end, only you know the total amount of effort you put when working out, but a good trainer serves as a mentor and helps you achieve your goals in a safe and quick way. It’s a win-win situation. Results take time, but considerably less time than you think if good form is in the picture. Train hard, but train smart.
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