THE INSIDER’S TELL-ALL HANDBOOK ON WEIGHT-TRAINING TECHNIQUE

Exercise form and injuries

Training injuries come from at least three main
sources—bad exercises, overtraining, and good ex-
ercises done in poor form. Descriptions of the bad
exercises have been excluded from this book, and
overtraining comes from poor program design. Pro-
gram design is not in the scope of this book. This
book’s concern is with teaching you how to do the
good exercises in perfect form.
Once you have studied the book you will realize
how universal poor exercise form is. Then you will
quickly see why injuries are so widespread.
For example, consider the shoulders. From read-
ing this book you will come across many technique
flaws that put excessive stress on the shoulders, e.g.,
the wrong bar pathway for the bench press, exces-
sively deep dips, pulldowns to the rear of the neck,
presses behind the neck, not keeping tight shoul-
ders at the arms-extended position in back work,
and slamming into lockouts of pressing movements.
All these flaws are probably common practices in
all gyms of the world. These flaws alone are enough
to give anyone shoulder problems, sooner or later.
And when you add the bad exercises that are also
commonly done, e.g., close-grip upright row, and
the deep pec fly, then a bad situation becomes even
worse. Then factor in gross overtraining of the
shoulders, and it should be no surprise that almost
every weight trainee of experience has shoulder
problems.
Once you have studied this book you will be
able to compile a list of common form defects that
contributes to each of the other universal training-
related problem areas—the knees, lower back and
elbows.
Stick to the safe forms of exercises as giv-
en in this book, protect your joints, and
then you will be able to train consistently
over the long term. Being able to train
over the long term should be your pri-
ority, because without being able to do
so you will never achieve your physique,
strength or fitness goals.

Rep speed
Elite bodybuilders, lifters and athletes can tolerate and even prosper on explosive training because they
have the required robustness of joints and connective tissue. But even they often pay a heavy price in terms
of injuries, eventually. There is absolutely no need to take any risk with explosive training. A slower and
controlled rep tempo is so much safer, and by far the best option for typical trainees. Why seriously risk
pushing your body beyond its structural limits, and possibly suffering permanent injuries, when there
is a safer way to train that is super productive?
Rather than try to find the “ideal” rep speed, focus on keeping each rep smooth, and totally free of
explosive or sudden movements. In practice, however, “smooth” reps take about 3 seconds for each nega-
tive phase, and 2–3 seconds for each positive phase—and perhaps even longer for the positive phase at
the end of a set when the reps grind to a near halt. “Long stroke” exercises require more time than “short
stroke” ones.

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