Record Your Exercises to Improve Your Technique and Form
In weightlifting, form and technique are everything . You may think you are doing the right thing, but you wouldn’t know for sure if you hadn’t been trained by a professional, watched you lift weights, or ideally both. You can of course look at yourself in the mirror, but the best way to learn is to record yourself on video using your phone’s camera. You can then review this later (ideally with a trainer) and see what you should fix.
We have already emphasized the importance of form . If you’re unsure of your shape, a video is the perfect way for a personal trainer to criticize him, but it will also help you become aware of your own quirks and inclinations. For example, you might find out that on the bench press you prefer the right side and do strange things with your shoulder to move the weight. You can then work alongside a professional to eliminate your quirks right away. (Also, people sometimes post their videos on the public forum for advice, but I usually don’t recommend this due to the potentially conflicting information you can get from both qualified and unqualified respondents.)
Don’t worry, it’s okay to be shy about signing up for a gym, but remember, it’s for your own good! As for how to set up your phone for recording, you can always ask someone to help you shoot a video for a couple of minutes, or MacGuyver grab an impromptu tripod using a bench to hold the phone and small weights to put it in place.
If you need exercise ideas for writing, these are just a few of the exercises that can be problematic for most people:
- Squats
- Lunges
- Overhead presses
- Deadlift
- Push ups
The list of exercises can be quite extensive depending on who we are talking about, so this is just a starting point. I highly recommend shooting videos from different angles – front, back and side – for a better assessment. You can then review them, or better yet, send one or all of them to the trainer for review.
Stephanie Lee is a freelance health and fitness writer. You can follow her shenanigans on Twitter or on her YouTube channel .