filming training and exercise performance

[alfresco]

It is my opinion, that most people
who weight train, have zero idea how
they really look when performing an
exercise.

(Professional bodybuilders may be
the exception here. The great ones
tend to have, among other things going
for them, an innate ability to connect the
mind to the muscle and what they look
like training may be misleading to others.
Not all have "perfect" form, but what they
do undoubtedly works for them. Room for
improvement? Perhaps. But you will likely
get a response like; if it ain't broke, why
fix it?)

This is apparent to me every time I step
onto the weight room floor. I can't help but
think that if people really knew who ridicules
they looked when performing some exercises,
they would not perform them in the way they
do. And by the way . . . this is rarely the case
with the women I have observed.

We have all seen them. The guys who perform
bench presses with a ridicules amount of
arch. The squatting lateral raises. The barbell
curls that look like a monkey trying to fu@k a
football on ice. Some movements performed
the way they do them are downright dangerous,
and then they blame the exercise for the injury,
not the form they used to cause it.

Part of the problem in my eyes is threefold:
one, they see how other people they aspire to
look like train and they figure that if they train
like them they will look like them and secondly,
the degradation in exercise form is so slow
as to go unnoticed (akin to like trying to watch
your hair grow). And thirdly, they do not have a
reliable, knowledgeable source of criticism, and
what criticism they do get is largely taken as
an assault on their ego and immediately gets
rejected.

My point being . . . I believe that if people really
knew what they looked like when training they would,
in most cases, alter the style of their performance.

What is your take on this?

 

[Blenderate]

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[mrcat]

Recording has been EXTREMELY valuable for me. I don't record everything at once. Over a few months, I probably evaluate every movement, even warmup. Sometimes I just check it between sets/exercises, sometimes latter on the computer. I use a Flip recorder. It was only around $150 for one hour of digital recording. It is very high quality video and plugs in easily to the usb port. Its really small, probably like a couple cig packs.

 

[jm425]

Filming would be a good idea. However, there's a good way of cheating on form and a bad way. A controlled cheat is very useful on certain exercises such as curls, and lateral raises where you use a little bit of body english to get those last few reps. However, swinging the weight wildly with no control for the purposes of feeding an overinflated ego is down right stupid and dangerous. Even when the pros cheat they do it in a controlled way way where they are still working and taxing the muscle they are working on.