Hey Athletes! Want to learn more about how to improve your lifting form? Then don’t forget to check out this week’s episode of Ask Me Anything!
Episode 47 of Ask Me Anything is up!
Ask Me Anything: Best Way To Improve Lifting Form
On this week’s AMA, Jerred and Joe are answering Asher’s question. He asks about programming progressions for lifts in order to gain proper form. The guys dive in and go over how to improve form while training alone in your gym!
If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to the Garage Gym Athlete podcast either on Stitcher, iTunes, or Google Play by using the link below:
Related Resources at End of Three Fitness:
- 7 Ways to Train Alone (and Actually Push Yourself)
- Ask Me Anything: Best Way to Use Garage Gym Athlete Programming
Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add them to the comments below!
To becoming better!
Jerred
Transcript:
Jerred Moon
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage mathlete podcast Jerred. Moon here with Joe Courtney. What’s up, Joe?
Joe Courtney
Hey man.
Jerred Moon
Ama let’s do it. Asher asked question he said thoughts on programming progressions for certain lifts to help train proper movement for lifts like cleans? Would this be something that novices and seasoned lifters alike would benefit from? What are your thoughts on lifting progressions Joe?
Joe Courtney
Usually when I help people with their forums, because when we do video, video submissions on either in the form check or in the past is working with athletes and such, I use these breaking it down to the very beginning. So the first use the first two parts of a lift is where a lot of people fail. And honestly, if you’re, you want to get better at something, then you should start from the beginning anyway. So from the setup to the very first poll, even I’ve noticed a lot with with athletes that say in a, even just a deadlift, a snatch a clean, the first pole lifted off the ground, there’s things to fix. So there’s plenty of tutorials and things online on YouTube videos, but break it down the movements into segments. And instead of like watching a video of like, okay, when this person does this full clean, I see them doing this with their feet. So I’m gonna go and clean right now and try and do that with my feet. Trying to put everything together while it’s in motion, whereas you should just do the first segment and preferred the first perfect the first segment first and then string that to the second segment. And then bring those two together. And then so on and so forth. Throughout is kind of how I break things down and teach them or when people send me a video that if their form is all screwed up, I still only give them like one or two things to fix first to work on to practice, and then just go from there versus throwing everything at him at once.
Jerred Moon
Yeah, and I think so if we’re talking Olympic lifts specifically. I mean, that’s even how the pros train Olympic lifts is they do snatch poles clean poles, you know, they do all they break it down. That’s why they’re they have jerk boxes at different heights. So they’ll do the they pull it from above the knee below the knee, you know, mid thigh, like they do all these different things to to break down the lift even further. So you can get more practice and more muscle memory surrounded all the different sections of a lift, because sometimes you can just have one bad portion of a lift, you know, like you could do something wrong at the bottom of a squat, or you could like Josie, you could have a bad pull off the floor, but everything else might look good. But that one thing can screw up the rest of the lift. And it does with the Olympic lifts. The only thing I think is hard is a is a self diagnosis. If you’re not really into this stuff of like I do think that people should. This is true of all garaged mathletes for all lifting. Like I think that you should film yourself and watch yourself lifts because most of us don’t have mirrors in our gyms, you know. And so if you don’t have a mirror, then there’s no real way to know if you what you’re doing is right. You know, I think about it all the time. Because I do feel myself doing squats and whatever occasionally. But I’m always like, I wonder if my squat form has changed. I wondered like, it feels right to me, but what if something’s off. And so I I still do frequent video reviews. You know, having probably put in like a million squat repetitions, and I still, you know, do do reviews and form checks and everything. So I think that you should should break these things down as much as possible. It is super annoying, if you’re new at lifting to like, do all these pieces of a lift and then try and put it together. But your body is learning. It’s it’s like a golf swing. It’s like it just you’re putting all these things together. You keep practicing and practicing and then as you complete the full movement, whatever that movement may be, you know, you will get better at it. So I think progressions are really good. And what’s cool about specifically cleans as Asher mentioned, if you can do a clean pool, which we still I’m still comfortable programming clean pools like we’ve we gotten away from most Olympic lifts but things you’ll still see for us are clean pools and even like hang cleans and and occasional squat cleans because there’s just a solid movement and it’s not that hard to execute. You know, it’s when you’re going overhead or there’s some sort of footwork involved where things get really complicated on these lifts that make it more make it worse. So anyway, I do think that progressions are super important, no matter the lift, even if it’s just a back squat or a deadlift. I know when I first was learning to deadlift I watch video after video I sat in my living room and did you know broomstick PVC stuff like I mean I probably spent two or three days perfecting my deadlift, with like, no weight before I went to go deadlift and then I started light and moved up, you know I’ve just real meticulous about those things because I don’t want to get hurt on on some of these bigger lifts. So progressions are really important. And I think everyone should watch themselves and break down their own form and see where they’re going wrong.
Joe Courtney
Yeah, video review is as big as great. Even recently, I’ve video by self and squad and I’ve noticed sometimes I do like, my hips shift one, one direction to the other to the side. And being conscious of that I can just think about it when I lift or cleans I don’t do very often, but when I decided to test it, or we play around one weekend and do it all, sometimes video myself and then if there’s a point where if I, my hips aren’t extending enough, then I noticed that in the video, then I’ll do a just a bodyweight exercise like like a jump, or something to make sure that the muscle memory of getting my hips extended and exploding forward so that when I go and clean, I noticed a huge difference.
Jerred Moon
Yeah, and one thing I noticed with my squat, let’s say over the last three years, it was pretty good. Like I had a good squat. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, my knees, knees started diving in. And this happens to a lot of people, but it had just had never really been happening to me in the past. But then there was about a year period where like, that just was like my default, like when things got heavy my knees would, would come in, you know, and I think that people really overcomplicate this, it’s not the end of the world for that to happen, but you don’t want it to happen. Like every single repetition. And I started to go down the YouTube path and like, I just think people overcomplicate the shit out of this. They’re like, they’re they’re taping bands to their knees as they’re doing squats with like kettlebells attached and like, you know, I’ve talked about this stuff with you, Joe. Like sometimes people just take it way overboard, and they’re normally people with like a Doctorate of something who they really they really want to dive in. I’m sure all that stuff help. But you know how I stopped making my knees dive in. When I would squat? I wouldn’t let my knees dive in. pushing him out. Yeah, that was it. That was the that was the fix. There was no, it wasn’t a complicated thing, I did have to lower the weight to be able to get to that point. And that’s why like when I lift today, and people watch me do a squat video every time nine times out of 10 people like you can lift more weight. And I’m like, if I lift more weight, my form might break down. This is the maximum load I could lift with perfect form. And so that’s why I always keep that standard as as what I do for just squatting in any lift in general, I don’t let the form break down. The only case I would let that happen is if I go for the 500 pound back squat and five minute mile in my form needs to break down a little bit to get that 500 pound back squat. That’s the only case i’m not even saying a regular PR fit week. Still not okay and a regular PR fit week only okay if you’re going for a really fast bat mile and heavy back squat in the same day.
Joe Courtney
Because then you can retire and just be a biker. Yeah,
Jerred Moon
I can I’m done after this. You know if i if i can? If I can achieve it. I could just be
Joe Courtney
done on the wreck.
Jerred Moon
Yeah, just get out just gonna go cycle and do Murph. That’s it. All right. Asher, I do appreciate the question. If anybody else has a question, go to garage gym athlete.com slash ama? submit your questions, and we’ll be happy to answer that. Now, if you’re on your little podcast player right now, we’d love review. I know I just say at the end of ama’s. But asking you five star review positive comment really helps the show. I would really appreciate it. Joe, would you appreciate it? Always. Of course. Yeah. Joe would love it. Like we would just love it. So go give that review. YouTube, if you like seeing our smiling faces. I don’t even know if we smile this whole podcast but if we did, you can see that on YouTube. So subscribe, give us comment, thumbs up and we would love that as well. So thanks for watching or listening