Swinging weights, or/and using partial range of motion are two common sights I see in the gym.

If your form regualarly breaking down then you are not optimising your results as training with a full range of motion has been shown to deliver superior results..

Here are 4 strategies to help improve your form-

1. Select A Weight That You Can Use Good Form With

One of the most common things I see in the gym is people trying to use too much weight on an exercise. Guys are most often guilty of this.

Gaining strength is a slow process, if you try to increase the weight too quickly your form will definitely go out the window. You’ll use a partial range, growth potential will be reduced and from my experience your likelihood of injury will increase.

Win small battles a rep at a time over a long time period. This is what compounds to great levels of strength.

Keep your ego in check and your strength training focused on it being your own battle. No one around you is impressed how much weight you may be swinging around sloppily and its possible you may end up on an episode of Gym Fuckery.

On this theme rather than trying to increase the weight too quickly-

2. Work within a repetition bracket before increasing the weight

Jumping up to the next dumbbell or adding extra weight to the bar can often be too steep a progression.

Say for example you are able to perform 3 sets of 10 with a 10KG dumbbell. The next dumbbell is most likely 12.5KG’s. That’s a massive 25% increase! You are definitely initially not be able to perform the same amount of reps with this new weight and trying to do so will force you to loosen up your form.

Whats better is to work within a ‘rep bracket’.

You don’t increase the weight until you have reach the high end of the rep bracket. The weight then increases and you’ll work from the low end of the rep bracket, again slowly chipping away at adding reps until again you are at the top of the rep bracket.

Example-

Dumbbell Row, 4 sets of 6-8 reps (24-32 total reps), 180 seconds rest

Week 1, 15KG x 8, 15KG x 7, 15KG x 7, 15KG x 6 = 28 reps total

Week 2, 15KG x 8, 15KG x 8, 15KG x 8, 15kg x 8 = 32 reps total

Week 3, 17.5KG x 6, 17.5KG x 6, 17.5KG x 6, 17.5KG x 6 = 24 reps total

Week 4 17.5KG x 8, 17.5KG x 7 17.5KG x 6, 17.5KG x 6 = 27 reps total

Week 5 17.5KG x 8, 17.5KG x 8 17.5KG x 8, 17.5KG x 7 = 31 reps total

For some exercises, especially isolation exercises where the increments for increases in strength are smaller you may have to broaden the rep bracket further to say 8-15 reps.

3. Slow down the tempo

Sometimes in order to truly master a movement you’ll need to perform the movement more slowly to get a feel and find the right groove for the exercise. Add pauses to parts of the rep where you are struggling the most with control. For example if you are getting to the bottom of the squat then collapsing forward use less weight, and add a 2-3 second pause at the bottom. This will allow you to get a feel for how to keep tension in this position and build isometric strength.

A good learning tempo I use with my clients is 3121. That’s 3 seconds on the way down, 1 pause a the bottom, 2 seconds on the way up and 1 second pause at the top.

Once once you have mastered the movement you can then return to a more common tempo of say 3010 and work on steady strength progression from here.

4. Keep a couple of reps in the tank

Another common scenario is form breaking down when training to failure.

For long term progress avoiding training to failure too often is a smarter approach especially on multi joint exercises. Instead work on a steady rep bracket progression as described above keeping a rep or two in the tank.

On the last set you could work to push it a bit closer to failure with your form still being good, but go by how you feel on the day and use this sparingly.

Wrap Up

Improving your form will go a long way to not only improving your results as a muscle worked through a full range of motion is a better worked muscle but it will also decrease your risk of injury from sloppy form.