Form vs Style

“If you don’t learn good form, you’re going to get injured”, shouted another personal trainer trying a high pressure fear mongering close technique on a prospective client. While there are certain positions that are stronger or weaker than others, what “good form” really looks like varies greatly from person to person, because, whether we like it or not, we are all uniquely different in our dispositions, both physical and mental.

When it comes to strength training, don’t associate form with safe or unsafe, associate it more with the outcome you desire. If you are doing deadlifts to make your upper back and glutes stronger but your lower back is very rounded during the lift, you may need to reassess your form to meet the desired outcome. If however, your goal is to lift as much weight as possible, there may be a positional advantage to acquire that might not look like “good form” however it will temporarily allow you to move more from point a to point b. Looking at form as a means to an end works well when you only know what your end is, and let’s be honest, most of us are not exactly sure why we are doing some of these movements, but we know that we want to do them safely and efficiently.

I have good news, chances are, if your sets reps and weight progressions are being managed intelligently by yourself or your coach, chances are that what you are doing is safe. At some point, however, we’ve seen someone squat, and thought “that looks right, they have good form”. It may have been because of the weight on the bar, or as simple as their positions, but sometimes it just looks right, and then we think we should emulate them, because, after all, they have good form and we want to have good form too. 

This usually falls flat, but if you are familiar with Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, where nothing we see in the real world is the true version of itself. We don’t see a true tree, we see a shadow of the true tree, etc. Form in lifting is exactly this. The single perfect squat does not exist. It cannot exist, because we are all different. Perfect for you and perfect for me are likely to be two totally different things. Upper leg length, lower leg length, ankle and hip mobility, torso length, shoulder mobility, etc all factor into our bodies’ ability to perform a squat. Consider muscles strengths and weaknesses as well. Consider goals, relationships with the movement, injury history and your own mental barriers you may have associated with exercises and positions that you consciously or unconsciously have deemed to be “safe”. All of these factors create thousands of “right” answers and each is likely to be entirely unique to you and your current ability to control your body through space. This is style.

Style is what makes your form unique, but still correct. The only way to know this is to see it and feel it thousands of times. Luckily for me, this is my profession, watching people squat, and understanding the complexity of the different styles of squatting that can all be safe, effective and powerful. What looks right for someone else might feel and look awkward for you and vice versa. The squat is a good example to nail down because it is such a basic fundamental movement, however, time and society take its toll and we often begin to lose the ability to perform this movement confidently the longer we go without performing it. When someone is relearning how to squat, it is like teaching someone how to drink water out of a cup again. Somewhere, intrinsically, we know how to do it, but we’ve forgotten how to organize our bodies. In order to feel empowered we try to emulate others that seem to be doing it confidently, but, as we’ve already mentioned, this strategy can fall short. 

We need to find a combination of confidence, mobility, control, and strength that allows us to naturally assume these exercise positions. Not all movements are as complicated as the squat, because not all movements require the multifaceted articulation of so many different parts of the body simultaneously. Regardless, each exercise, the way it feels, and what is good form will be dictated by your unique style. We can influence style to a point, by improving muscle weaknesses, gaining or losing mobility, and becoming more confident in our ability to perform a task. The factors we cannot change, will still have a massive impact on our ability to move in certain ways, not for the worse or for the better, but simply because you are you.