Weight Training Body Form

Understanding human body movement – physiology – is the key in lifting heavy weights. Skeleton and muscles make a lever system that works together – the lever system (human body) has a rigid rod (bones), a pivot point (joints) and force applied (muscles). This biological mechanism is designed to move the particular way (biomechanics).

Keep your body form, be the machine

When you do chest press on the exercise machine you want it to be intact and move smoothly. If some of the steal parts are bent, damaged, broken you will report that to a gym instructor or a personal trainer for it to be fixed. When you do free weight exercises, there is no machine – except your own body. Correct body form is essential for the biomechanics function smoothly and at its highest capacity.

Personal trainer Rolandas maintains the tight form under 180kg bar at his East London personal training studio

Weight training is resistance type of training. Many people think that lifting weight you just have to resist gravity so that the weight goes up and down. For example, the poor understanding – squat is an exercise where you lift bar on your shoulders up and down. If you try it in this straight forward fashion – you will only be able to lift a negligible percent of your true potential or you will end up in a hospital, or both. Squat puts pressure on the whole body engaging agonist muscles (prime movers), synergist (muscles assisting agonist), fixators (muscles that prevent movement at joints other than the ones employed to exercise) and relaxing antagonist muscles (opposing muscles that relax allowing agonist do the work). Just focusing on the obvious task – lifting weight up and down – prime movers and synergist muscles engage, while fixators do not resist the weight properly (due to not focusing on them as they don’t lift the weight directly). That results in broken body form.

Just like any broken machine, human body in poor form does not work neither smoothly nor safely. Hence, specific technique must be applied to coordinate different body parts and muscle groups to lift weight in a firm and flawless form. Learning how to keep the correct posture under resistance is what everyone should start from. Free weight training without the form is inefficient and dangerous. To a degree that applies to most weight training exercises, not only big compound movements like dead lift or squat. Performance on bench press, pull ups, bent over rows and even standing biceps curls can be improved dramatically by keeping the tight, neutral form.

Contact online personal trainer Rolandas (12 years personal training experience in east London) to learn the specific details of how to keep the correct body form on compound weight training exercises.

About Rolandas

Rolandas Malinauskas is online personal trainer with 12 years personal training experience in east London and decorated natural bodybuilder – Natural Physique Association (NPA) Mike Williams Classic 2011 Men’s Lightweight Champion, NPA Mike Williams Classic 2011 Men's Overall Vice-champion and NPA British Championship 2011 Men’s Lightweight Vice-champion. Rolandas has been dedicated to natural bodybuilding for over 18 years now. 3 out of 12 years of personal training career Rolandas has been consulting on one of the biggest schemes of Exercise on GP Referral in London (Islington), allowing him to treat lower back, knee pain, cardiovascular problems, arthritis etc.