Form is probably the single most important thing when it comes to weight training. I know this. I know the proper the form for all the lifts I do. I have a workout partner that is watching every rep of every set I do, and he tells me if my form slips even a little. Still, I hurt myself this morning, and I did it because I did a lift with bad form.
I was extremely weak when I started lifting weights a few years ago with Jarrod. At the time, I outweighed him by almost 100lbs, and he could do twice the weight I could on every lift. Now, competing with each other in the gym has never been something that was important to either of us. We both just work to get better and do the best that we can. That said, it's difficult to see that you are so far behind the person you work out with every day. For that reason, I tend to push a little harder than I should when it comes to weights.
Now don't get me wrong, pushing hard weightlifting isn't in itself a bad thing. In fact, it's important to push hard if you want to see improvement. The measure of working hard, though, needs to be the level of fatigue you bring to your muscles, not to the actual weight you lift or the number of reps you manage in a set. I would often, and still do occasionally, fall into the trap of feeling that I needed to get one more rep, or get that next weight. This was especially true when it came to the bench press. The bench was one of Jarrod's best lifts, and he could bench more than twice his weight. I, on the other hand, could bench about half of mine when we started.
One of the first goals I set was to bench my own weight. That was going to be quite a challenge considering that on top of being so weak, I was about 100lbs overweight. My 1 rep max on the bench press and my weight did finally meet at about 240lbs. Once I had done that, I set my sights on 300lbs. I knew it would be difficult to do, but I also knew I could do it given enough time. I did finally bench 300lbs, but along the way I developed a bad habit. That habit is what got me hurt today.
When you focus on weight or reps you tend to forget the goal is health and fitness and get in your mind that the goal is getting that weight up. Sometimes, when I would get stalled with a weight, I would get so focused on getting the weight up that I would forget about form. I would rotate a little so that my left shoulder came off the bench, like I was going to work the weight up one side at a time. Of course, this doesn't make pushing weight straight up in the air any easier, but logic rarely factors in to that kind of thing. It's easy to develop a bad habit like that, but very hard to break them. Whenever the weight I was pressing would get hard, my form would suffer, and I'd roll that shoulder up. This did two really bad things--it unevenly distributed the weight between my arms, and it put my back in an awkward position. Fortunately, I never hurt my back while doing bench press. Unfortunately, that habit followed me to other lifts.
This morning, we were working legs, and I was doing squats. On the 4th rep of my 5th set, I stalled a little on the way up. As it happened, I felt myself push a little harder with my left leg than the right, and shift my weight slightly as I came up. I should have racked the weight. I didn't though. I figured I could do one more rep. I didn't even try to do this one right. At the bottom of the lift, without thinking at all, I shifted my weight to my left leg and pushed up. This time, I didn't just shift a little though. I really moved my weight, and it completely changed my center of gravity. It's the worst kind of form break on the most dangerous lift I do. As I came up, my upper body was bent to the left to put my weight over the leg doing the most pushing. This also turned me slightly at the waist. Those three things together--pushing unevenly, shifting my weight to one side, and changing my upper body position--were just too much for my lower back. I felt a pain that was like something pushing out on my lower back from the inside. This time at the top of the lift, I did rack the weight. The damage was done though. It's hurting pretty bad right now, and I'm moving really slowly. Hopefully, it's not as bad as it feels, and a little rest will be all I need. I guess time will tell.
Posted by at January 30, 2003 10:53 AM