The art of technique

Laura here.

I have been trying to write this entry since Friday of last week. It’s amazing the amount of stuff that needs to get done. Add one long weekend when The Husband is off and everything pretty much takes on a life of its own. But that's enough of my excuses.

Before we get started, I would like to mention that I got through a pool workout this morning with no incidents (there was an incident and it could have been mine but it was not). YAY!

I don't know if it’s my keen observation skills or that I am just plain nosey, but I like to watch people and what they are doing (mind out of the gutter please! This is not that kind of show). Some days this provides me great pleasure (I said out of the gutter) and other days, amazement or even disgust. On really good days, both!

Which brings me to my fellow gym goers. It pains me deeply (and I am sure them the next day) to watch bad technique. This is mostly during resistance training (I would like to mention how difficult life is without Wikipedia today). I rarely observe bad technique on cardio equipment other than holding onto the hand rails and I still need to look away.

Let me share some examples of what not to do:

1)    Don’t short change your muscle. You want to use the full range of motion and engage the entire muscle. There is a woman at NYSC that I used to see every day doing bicep curls on the cable machine, if she moved her arm 5 degrees I would be shocked. It’s a waste of time and she was accomplishing nothing.

2)    Don’t hold your breath! Inhale during the lift and exhale during the lowering.

 

3)    Don’t rush through the exercise.  If you are rushing through you are probably  not using proper technique and probably using too much or too little weight( how much to use? different blog on a different day)

Yesterday morning I got to observe "the trainer that wears too much cologne" at the JCC train a client and I was appalled.  Not only was the trainer carrying around a cup of coffee, every time the client did an exercise the trainer was off setting up the next one. I watched the client and he will be sore today but not for the right reasons. The last I knew, a session with a trainer is a business meeting but in shorts.

4)    Don't be afraid to ask.  If you do not know what a piece of equipment does, ask someone that works there. That is what they are there to do. Every gym ultimately has the same equipment but from different manufacturers so they can all look different. Some even have multiple uses and you may see someone doing some move you have never seen before. So ask and you might learn something.

This part is going to be a little creepy. During my primetime gym visit last week, I was struck by the bad technique that I was observing I recorded it with my phone. You don't want to be this woman:

So as Sensei Montes used to say “Perfect practice leads to perfect performance” or something really close to that.

Play hard & do it right!

Laura