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It doesn’t look good on instagram, and it doesn’t give you immediate gratification, but if you focus on moving well before moving heavy, you will eventually be able to move heavier for much longer. 

A good way to think of this is by imagining a set of tyres on a car. Under normal circumstances the tyres wear down at a normal rate. As long as you’re not rallying about like a mad man, smashing into pot holes, and your tracking is aligned, you will get the full life span out of the tyres. Your joints are your tyres. 

To help ensure a long training life and the ability to prevent injury as best we can, we need to first look at movement quality itself. Let’s take the Front Squat as an example. Picture this, you see somebody at the gym load up a barbell, unrack it, and begin to front squat. As the begin to squat you notice that their rack position is questionable. They are only able to hold the bar with a single finger on each hand, and their elbows are pointing towards the ground. 

As they descend into the bottom of their squat, you also notice that their ankles begin to collapse inwards, and the knees then begin to follow. The final thing that you see is that as they drive up out of their squat, their back begins to round and the whole lift begins to shift forward. You let out a sigh of relief as they survive the rep, until to your horror you discover that that was only rep one of five! It doesn’t take a biomechanics specialist to spot bad movement. You could show this squat and Lu Xiao Jun‘s to a 5 year old and they would be able to tell you which one is more optimal. 

So what to do? Whilst squatting with the aforementioned technique is possible, it is certainly not going to be conducive to lifting a significant load safely. My advice would be to address the issues individually, and then put the movement back together. Most of these issues may be able to be addressed with a decent dose of mobility work, stability exercises, and also movement pattern practice. Learn how to perform the perfect air squat before adding in an external load. 

Move well, then move heavy. 

If you enjoyed this post, check out my next post “No Caffeine 8 Hours Before Bed“.