They say that Practice Makes Perfect but I can tell you in the weight room, the old saying
is Only Perfect Makes Perfect.
What's up guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM
When it comes to weight training only perfect practice makes perfect.
When you're trying to get better at a lift or when you're trying to actually become a
more efficient athlete.
Form is everything.
Why is that?
Because of something that we call Motor Engrams, ok.
Now you can see right here again with my inadequate drawing skills.
We've got the angel and the devil.
Because there are two very distinct sides to this right here.
And what we're talking about is Neuromuscular.
When we train in the weight room, when we do anything on a competitive field, we're
using not just our muscles but our brains as well.
Because the connectivity of our brains through our nervous system to our muscles to get them
to fire properly.
It's like having a great computer system with crappy software.
You're not going to be able to run it properly.
Right, it's not going to work to it's most capability.
So what we want to do is have the complete picture.
And at ATHLEANX I always try to reenforce for you guys, training for the complete picture.
So let me outline a couple of scenarios for you to underscore why this is so important.
Why attention to form is so important.
What Motor Engram is, is a stored movement pattern.
So it helps us to become more neuromuscularly efficient when we need to tap into that at
whatever time.
So lets take an athletic move.
And then lets take a move in the weight room.
First an athletic move like the golf swing, in order to execute a golf swing,
if our brain had to perform every individual step, it would become very inefficient, time
consuming and probably not very fun to play the game.
Because think about what we have to do.
Just to grip the club, we have to extend our arms, ok, meaning firing the triceps to a
certain degree.
Too much tension, bad.
Too little tension, not good.
So it has to have a certain play on the contraction of the triceps to extend the elbow.
The fingers, individually have to flex, ok.
We can't just say, flex the grip or create a grip.
That's an Engram.
We want to be able to, you know the brain is basically saying, you need to flex the
pinkie, flex the ring finger, flex the middle finger, right.
Again, apply the right pressure, too much pressure, too little pressure, ok.
All these things, again we haven't even gotten to the take away yet.
If your brain had to think about every single individual step every time you went to go
grip and swing a club.
It'd be pretty inefficient.
So what our brain does is it hard wires patterns.
Ok, this hard wired pattern means golf swing.
When I'm standing over a golf ball basically I tap into this Engram and say do this, give
me the golf swing.
And all those pieces have to instantly, right you know it's all coordinated.
Matter of fact you have a pretty stable swing for you guys that play golf.
Yes it's going to veer off track often, if you play golf like I do, you realize that
it's not always easy.
But the pattern, the swing always pretty much looks the same.
In a weight room when you go to grip a bar, ok.
You're gripping the same thing.
We tell ourselves, grip the bar.
The grip is all those individual components I just went through on the golf swing of gripping
the club.
But it happens instantly because of stored motor pattern.
So this is good when you can tap into a well defined efficient Engram.
So that when I go to the golf swing or let's say, a quarterback and I have to get rid of
the ball quickly.
I know that I can rely on that without having to think through each and every step of the
movement.
That's good, that's over here.
It's bad when you have flaws in your movement pattern.
Because engrams are not always perfect.
And when you're in the weight room and your training, this is the crux of this video here
guys, we want to make sure that you're listening.
When you're in the weight room and you're training, you could have poorly programed
engrams.
So if you're getting ready to do the squat and you have never activated your glutes.
Or you have never learned how to sit into your hip flexors like I actually, you know
told you in some of the earlier videos.
Your stored movement pattern is a flawed one.
Ok, what you're going to do is rely on the Engram which says squat, ok.
But your squat may be rife with imbalance.
Rife with disproportionate knee and hip flexion.
Things that are going to lead to injuries.
Things that are going to lead to you just further ingraining bad movement patterns.
Things that will compromise your strength in the long run.
So what am I saying here.
You want to make sure that when you're practicing whatever lift it is.
If you're practicing your squats.
If you're a new person in the weight room.
You know, guys remember we all were there, the first time that you got underneath of
a bench press bar.
That thing was going all over the place, right.
Why?
Because you had never developed an Engram or a pattern for that bench press.
When you're new or when you're starting out a new exercise.
We like to throw a lot of new exercises at you here at ATHLEANX.
When you're doing them, learn the proper form.
Try to become aware of your motor pattern.
Try to become aware of glute activity when you're doing any type of functional lower
body movement pattern.
Because I can guarantee you, you've got some amnesia going on there in your glutes.
And it's going to compromise your ability to do the lift.
Guys if you haven't already and you want to try to start training the right way.
As I said, exercises on paper are just exercises.
When you perform them right they become a training program.
That's what we have at ATHLEANX.COM.
I try to train you guys like athletes, so you can start looking like them and performing
better than you ever have before.
You can grab the program over at ATHLEANX.COM.
In the meantime, start paying real good attention to what you're doing in the weight room, to
what you're doing out on the field.
So that when you're practicing those movements you're getting them right.
Because that's the only time that it's going to matter.
Alright guys, I'll be back here in a couple of days.
Meantime let me know, thumb up down below or comment.
What types of things are automatic for you and what types of things do you still struggle
with.
Because some of the things you still struggle with I'm sure I can probably cover in videos
ahead.
I'll talk to you guys soon.