Proper Form for Proper Results

As I rounded the corner coming out of the locker room, I see a kid on the bench press.  He weighs about 160 pounds, but apparently he’s stronger than he looks; his bar is loaded with 275 pounds and he clearly has no need for a spotter.  He goes to work, gripping the bar nice and tight he thrusts the weight up a bit, locks his arms out, pauses for a couple of seconds, then drops the weight about 4 inches toward his chest, pushes the weight up with the fury and flailing of a trapped animal, then locks his arms again at the start position.  He is working out alone, but apparently still quite aware of his surroundings.  After 2 reps, he returns the weight to the rack, then sits up and looks around to see who noticed.  My initial reaction was to feel a bit of pity for the guy.  He struggles with the weight, looking fairly foolish, yet he’s clearly aware of his surroundings so he is probably embarrassed...  But then I see the look on his face, and the kid is pumped!  He was so proud of himself for moving that weight that he probably posted it on a social networking site or two.  You see, there is a certain pride with being able to lift the weight that the big guys lift.  I know the feeling; my father and older brother have been the big guys in the gym since I can remember.  They instilled something in me at a young age that has saved me much wasted time, embarrassment and prevented injuries.  They showed me that proper form is absolutely necessary when you work out.

What are You Talking About?

I can see the blank stares on some of your faces.  You have no idea what I’m talking about do you?  Well allow me to explain what I mean by proper form.  Every exercise in the gym was designed to work one or several muscles, even several muscle groups.  To get the most out of each set and each rep, you have to concentrate the movement on the muscles that the exercise was designed to work.  Let’s take everyone’s favorite, the bench press.  The bench press is a basic movement designed to work the chest (pectorals), shoulders (deltoids) and triceps.  Generally, you should grip the bar with hands about shoulder width, shoulder blades squeezed together to flatten the back, back relatively flat on the bench and the buttock flat on the bench.  The weight should be slowly lowered to the chest, stopped at the chest and then pushed back up in a controlled motion, only stopping momentarily at the top before the weight is returned to the chest.  But what you tend to see is arching backs, shaking arms and the weight only coming within about a foot of the chest.  The arching back is caused by the body trying to decrease the range of motion and to turn the exercise into a decline bench press, which tends to be easier for many people.  The arms are shaking because they are not able to control the weight that is being held.  The reason for the short range of motion is clear; there is less work that needs to be performed.  But if you can lift more weight by doing these things, isn’t that a good thing?  Simply put no, but allow me to explain.

The Time Factor

We work out with weights in order to make our muscles grow and/or get stronger.  If you are working with poor form, you are using peripheral muscles to do the work that was intended to work a very specific muscle or group of muscles.  So essentially, you are wasting your time if you use poor form because you are not maximizing the work performed by the intended muscles.  Back arching when you do the bench press, for instance, uses the core muscles to shorten the range of motion that the arms have to perform.  The problem is that the bench press is not a core exercise.  By shortening the range of motion, you also are not working the muscle fully, not allowing it to grow to its potential or causing it to grow unevenly.  Many of you have seen people in the gym who have biceps that are huge up closer to the shoulder, but flat down toward the elbow.  When the weight is being lowered after a rep, some tend to only let the weight drop down about half way before they curl it back up again.  This is not the full range of motion for the bicep; instead you are isolating the upper portion of the bicep, causing the upper bicep to grow faster than the lower portion.  When you work out with poor form, you will often draw the attention of other in the gym.

The Embarrassment

Whether you know it or not, people are watching you when you work out.  This shouldn’t make you nervous; it’s quite normal for people to glance around between sets.  And naturally, if one sees something interesting, it may catch and hold their attention for a few moments.  So when you are a fairly skinny guy, but you have as much weight on the bar as someone twice your size would, you’re going to draw some attention to yourself.  If you get on the bar dips machine and you do a reverse shoulder shrug, not bending the elbows at all, more attention.  When you slouch forward to start a bicep curl, only to throw your upper torso backward in an attempt to finish the curl, even more attention.  Unfortunately, it is often the same guy or gal who does all 3 of these things.  Because it is difficult to watch yourself work out, the only person in the gym who doesn’t notice your poor form is you. 

When you lift more weight than you can comfortably control, you are lifting too much weight.  The only people who are impressed by feats of strength accompanied by bad form are the other high school kids that you go to school with.  Experienced lifters are not impressed and they are probably a little irritated that you have commandeered all of the 45 pound plates in the general vicinity.  They are far more impressed by someone who has very strict form, regardless of the weight.  Very strict form can only happen if you are working with amounts of weight that you can control.  The big guys in the gym are not sitting around waiting to make fun of people with bad form; but many of them have learned why good form is necessary the hard and painful way.

Bad Form = Bad Injury

When you lift above your means, you greatly increase your chances of being injured.  Large or small, injuries are no good.  Tearing a muscle can be a very painful experience, tearing a tendon can require surgery and several months of recovery time.  By lifting with poor form and lifting too heavy, you tend to work or even overwork muscles at unnatural angles.  At these angles muscles are very weak and they simply can’t support each other or the surrounding connective tissue during the motion.  The result can be a muscle or connective tissue tear, which can take weeks or even months to heal.  Strength enhancers (steroids or others) have been known to cause similar injuries because they cause the muscles to grow faster and stronger than the connective tissue.  When you lift more weight than your tendons can support, the results can be catastrophic injury.

Conclusion

If you lift with poor form, whether it’s because you try to lift too much weight or you just haven’t learned how to lift properly, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage.  You simply won’t grow as efficiently as you could, which will hold you back from being able to comfortably lift the big weights one day.  While you look like you think you rule the gym because you can improperly bench 315, you may have several people looking at you laughing inside.  Experienced lifters are well aware that the weight comes secondary to form and arching your back and kicking your legs as you bench press looks funny to spectators, even if you do get the weight up.  The worst thing about poor form is that you greatly increase your chances of being injured.  Suck up your pride and ask either a personal trainer or someone from your gym who has good form to show you how to do an exercise properly.  You may be pleasantly surprised at how willing people are to help; additionally, you will save yourself a lot of time, shame and pain.

The Mean Green Coffee Bean

Dr. Oz and his wildly popular show have recently promoted yet another miracle fat loss pill.  This one even has a now popular scientific study to back the effectiveness of the product.  In the study, over 22 weeks it was reported to have helped participants lose an average of 17 pounds or 10% of their body weight.  This royal fat burner has very common origins, the green (or unroasted) coffee bean.  I just picked some up, but before I did, I wanted to do some research.  When you hear the word miracle, you should instantly be skeptical, but with a bit of research you can evaluate the odds of the bet you are making with your money.  I set out to understand the mechanism that is believed to be responsible for the weight loss, see the consensus with the reviews found on various websites and then see if there are any reasons that I should avoid green coffee bean extract.

Whenever I take a new product that is supposed to have a specific effect on me, I like to do research to see how this supposed effect will take place in my body.  Doing this gives me the information that I need to determine if this is something that I want to subject my body to.  For instance, if a supplement accelerates your heart and leaves a waste product for your liver to process, the results that you see may not be worth the damage that is caused to your body.  So what about green coffee bean extract?  What is it, how does it work? 

When they take an extract from the green coffee beans, the main component that they want is called chlorogenic acid.  Most green coffee bean extracts are “standardized to 50% chlorogenic acid,” or half of the extract is made up of chlorogenic acid.  Chlorogenic acid has been known as an antioxidant for years, but recently it has been touted for its ability to slow the release of glucose into the bloodstream (blood sugar) after a meal.  What is happening is that it inhibits the action of an enzyme in the body that breaks glycogen into glucose, thereby reducing the amount of glucose available to release into the bloodstream.  When the blood is starved of glucose, so are the cells in your body and glucose is their primary source of energy.  Oh but the body was created magnificently and it has a way around times like this.  When the cells are starved of glucose, insulin levels drop and your body initiates a process called ketosis.  This process basically switches your body over from using carbohydrates as energy to using fatty acids and ketones (in the case of the heart and brain), which are broken down from your body fat.  The result is clear; you lose body fat by breaking it down and using it as energy instead of carbohydrates. 
So essentially, green coffee bean extract works to decrease the glycemic index of the foods that you consume.  Glycemic index diets guide you to eat low carb diets or foods with carbohydrates that release glucose slowly into the bloodstream, preventing a hyperglycemic spike (elevated blood sugar levels).  The theory that controlling blood sugar will help you control your weight is the basis for diets like the South Beach Diet, Nutrisystem, Zone, Sugar Busters and Atkins.  There is no question that these diets do help people lose weight, when used properly, so this adds promise to the effects of green coffee bean extract.  The studies on this product will continue to accelerate as the product grows in popularity, but in the mean time we do have this limited knowledge on the mechanisms that may make this product effective.  We also have customer reviews and testimonials; what are they saying and can they be trusted?

When you search through online ads, you really have to be careful.  Several of the reviews that you find out there are really just cheap advertisements either placed or commissioned by one of the companies that make money off of the product.  If it sounds a little more like a commercial than an amateur personal review, be wary of the motives of the review.  There is, of course, the other side of the spectrum; you will find reviews that sound like the reviewer has a personal vendetta against the product.  I don’t usually pay much attention to these reviews either because it can be hard to tell what the person is actually angry about.  Often you will realize that it was the customer service experience that is causing the person to slander the product that they purchased.  When I was looking for reviews on green coffee bean extract, I definitely came across examples of both of these, but after digging through the weeds, I was able to find some that seem trustworthy. 

As the product’s reputation grows, so do the number of people who review the product, which gives you far more real reviews to look at.  There is a consensus on most websites that the product does work and most people see results fairly quickly.  There are some reviews from people that sounded perfectly honest, but the people did not lose any weight.  I believe that both of these reviews are valid.  The thing is that diet and exercise will have a huge effect on the results you see.  If you continue with a high calorie diet with processed foods, large amounts of alcohol and you never go to the gym, it really would be a miracle pill if it helps you lose weight under those circumstances.  It appears that in the vast majority of the more honest sounding testimonials, people did see some decrease in weight and an increase in energy.  After the short amount of time that I have been taking them, I can attest to an unquestionable increase in energy.  Another thing you will commonly see are reviews trying to drive you to very specific products.  Many say that Dr. Oz promoted PURE green coffee bean extract, with no other ingredients at all besides the capsule.  After doing some research, most of the other additional ingredients commonly found in green coffee bean extract don’t decrease the effectiveness of the extract.  Is there any reason one would want to avoid green coffee bean extract?

Though green coffee bean extract has not been studied on its own very thoroughly at this point, coffee has.  This is a natural extract from the coffee bean and there are no known side effects.  All of the research on green coffee bean extract and its major component, chlorogenic acid, show that you can safely take green coffee bean extract worry-free.  Seeing that there is no reason to not give it a try, if you are considering it, why not?

I wish I had invested in the green coffee bean extract market just before Dr. Oz put it on his show.  Since then, it is very difficult to find around town, sold out almost everywhere in Los Angeles.  But it looks like this stuff may be one of the more effective weight loss supplements to emerge recently.  People are spending on it and saying good things about it, which are two good signs.  Understanding how the product may work as far as weight loss shows promise as well.  It works to do what low glycemic diets do for the body and these diets have been time tested and do work for fat loss.  And with no side effects, I can’t see any reason to not give it a try!  If nothing else, it definitely gives you energy, but I will update this with my fat loss results soon.  Until then, if you have tried it, I would love to hear what you think.