Believe it or not, you can identify potential issues with your form without taking a video or having someone take a look at what you are doing.
How?
Ratios.
Allow me to mansplain:
You can predict with some considerable accuracy how strong a certain core barbell lift ought to be based on how strong you are in your other core barbell lifts.
Take the barbell back squat for a simple example.
If you are barbell squatting, say, 100kg for a set of 8, yet you can only barbell deadlift 85kg for a set of 8 the chances are you are squatting “high” (i.e. not descending until the hips are slightly below parallel with the knees).
Why?
In most cases and especially when shifting numbers like those above which are indicative of a trainee being new or otherwise inexperienced, the deadlift ought to be at least a little bit (but probably a lot) stronger than the back squat.
As I said, this is not always the way.
Certain injuries or extremes of morphology can result in the squat being legitimately higher than the deadlift.
But these are the exception, not the norm; and, regardless, such a discrepancy ought to prompt investigation.
Another example:
Strength in barbell rows and barbell bench presses is generally roughly equal when executed with proper form (i.e. no body English and a sufficiently flat torso when rowing, and bringing the bar to the chest and taking a short pause before pressing when benching).
“Roughly equal” does not mean perfectly equal, and simple logic will tell you that the row will almost always be slightly higher than the bench. But the operative word is “slightly”. A wild difference almost always means the trainee is doing one or more of the following:
* Rowing like a nugget,
* Treating the bench press as a two person lift,
* Using their sternum as a trampoline while benching,
* Doing half or quarter reps of the significantly stronger exercise.
Again, exceptions apply although I am sure at least one person will choose not to see this caveat and reply to tell me that I am “wrong” because it doesn’t apply to them.
Anyway.
What I have just described is just one of the many tools I use to provide accurate, definitive training advice to my loyal, hardworking, and intelligent clients without ever having met them in person.
Another is having them record videos of their exercise form for me to analyse and correct if necessary when I identify a discrepancy in the weights they are lifting, or if they simply want me to take a look so I can give them advice to facilitate the safe lifting of heavier weights.
On that note, if you are interested in becoming a client the best thing to do is book a call with me.
For the avoidance of doubt, ours will be a sales call with the sole objective of discovering if my methods and approach are suitable for your needs and aspirations.
If that is acceptable to you, book below:
https://philtyreman.co.uk/consult/
Thank you,
Phil Tyreman