Do You Use Proper Weight Training Form?

Many people visit their gym regularly and put a lot of time and effort into their strength training routines. Developing muscle strength with exercise methods such as weight training is essential to overall health and physical fitness. Unfortunately, many people do not follow some simple and logical weight training methods that would greatly improve their results. Using the proper weight training form is probably the most important step a person can take to start getting better muscle-building results from their workouts.

A proper weight training form is necessary for getting good strength-building results from your exercises. It also helps to increase the safety of resistance exercises. Most people perform their movements much too fast, which creates momentum. Whether you are lifting a weight stack, a free weight (dumbbells and barbells), or using your body weight, you do NOT want to generate momentum.  This will help carry the load and decrease the required muscle tension. Moving in a manner that does not use much momentum will force your muscles to contract with more force. This is based on the laws of physics.

So what should you do? Well, the primary recommendation is to take two full seconds to lift the resistance, pause for a second, and then lower real slowly, taking about four seconds. This amounts to approximately six to seven seconds for one repetition.

Let’s use a chin-up as an example. To begin, you should be in a full hanging position. Slowly pull up until your chin is above the bar. Now pause in this position, then lower your body weight very slowly to a count of four. Be sure to go all the way down again to a completely straight arm hanging position. Using the full range of motion is another key to getting maximum results when using proper weight training form.

Performing a chin-up in this manner is much harder than the way that many people do their chin-ups. But making the exercise harder is one of your goals. Building your muscles work harder will do a much better job of stimulating strength gains. While we have used the chin-up only as an example, this method should be applied to all your weight training exercises. It should be noted that when you first start to use proper weight training form, you may not be able to do as many reps or use as much weight as before. This is good because it is a sign that you are making the exercise harder to perform, which means your muscles are working harder.

Using an excellent slow and controlled speed of motion is difficult. Your body naturally wants to move faster because that makes the task easier. You will have to discipline yourself to achieve this type of proper weight training form. You should also make sure that you always move through the full range of motion for any given exercise. This will help to develop the entire length of the muscles involved. When you begin to concentrate on performing all your strength-building activities in good form, you will feel the difference and realize that this is the way to work out to get maximum muscle development benefits.