B is for Bad Form

by Heather Long | More from this Blogger

05 Jul 2007 09:14 AM

We talked about A is for Abdominals a couple of days ago and today, we're going to talk about Bad Form. Bad form happens when we're in a rush. You know what it's like to rush around, you have a dozen errands to do and you may only have 30 minutes to hit the gym while your son or daughter is at their dance class or other activity. When we rush things and we try to squeeze too many activities into too little time, we make mistakes.

B is for bad form because when we use bad form, we are at best not getting that much out of our exercise regimen and at worst, putting ourselves at risk for injury. The best ways to avoid bad form is to:

• Don't overload the weights - more does not always equal better and unless you are on a specific regimen of power lifting, toning lifts use low weight with high reps, not high weights. Too much weight and you risk serious injury that can prevent you from working out the next time
• There's more to your arm than your biceps - too often people work out one half of a set of opposing muscles, i.e. they work out their biceps, but not the triceps or their quadriceps and not their hamstrings. When you over train one half of a set of opposing muscles you run the risk of creating an injury for the underused muscles
• Crunches are great, but if you do nothing else, your abdominals are not going to tighten up - in fact, if you don't do something with your cardio and your nutrition, you may actually build muscle under the fat and that EXPANDS your waist instead of shrinking it
• Posture is everything - whether you are riding an exercise bike, walking on a treadmill or a stair climber, hunching over like a little old lady will not boost your fitness, you actually hurt yourself and your workout. If you are working out so hard that you have to hunch over to hang on, slow it down and perform it properly with correct posture to get a better workout
• Break Up Your Routine - routines are great, but try to break it up whether you switch the order of how you do your workout or whether you are changing the style of cardio or shifting around how you perform your weight routine, the simple fact is your body can memorize a routine faster than you can - so not only do you need to perform it correctly, you need to have the form to keep it changing

Have you ever worked with a personal trainer to correct your bad form?

Learn more about Heather Long

Heather Long is 35 years old and currently lives in Wylie, Texas. She has been a freelance writer for six years. Her husband and she met while working together at America Online over ten years ago.

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