Properly lifting weights has a host of benefits from building strength in your muscles and developing muscular endurance, to enhancing your physique, keeping you healthy, and boosting the fat your body burns. Using proper technique while lifting weights will ensure that you get the maximum benefits of your workouts and minimize the chance of injury. Learning to avoid bad lifting habits will keep you weight training for many years to come.
Step 1
Use light weights when beginning to lift. This ensures you are not cheating in the movement. Once you have mastered the mechanics of the movement, increase the weight to something more challenging but not too much so that you sacrifice your form. To avoid injury, all movements, no matter what body part, should be done in a smooth and controlled fashion with no jerking or swinging.
Step 2
Ask a partner or a personal trainer to look over your technique. Look for commonly made mistakes in technique, like arching and twisting the body when bench pressing heavy loads, and rounding the back while squatting. Lower the weight until the exercise can be performed with perfect form consistently and easily for ten reps. Raise the weight incrementally, and if the technique suffers, lower the weight again.
Step 3
Pay attention to your body. If you are using other muscles too much to get a movement started, you might be using too much weight. If you have to swing your hips to get the dumbbell up in a bicep curl, you are not only using poor form but cheating your bicep of the actual benefit of lifting the weight for a full range of motion.
Tips and Warnings
- Work with a spotter or partner, if possible, to help you keep proper form on the last rep of your set, which is where the temptation to cheat and sacrifice form is the greatest.
- Always warm up your muscles by doing very light stretching and doing warm up sets with light weights to avoid injury.
Things You'll Need
- Assorted barbells
- Assorted dumbbells
- Adjustable bench
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