Form
Form is incredibly important when it comes to weight lifting. You see it all the time when you enter the gym, with people performing exercises so poorly that they are an accident waiting to happen. By performing an exercise incorrectly you are increasing your chances severely of an injury such as a bad back on down the line. A good example is the dead-lift, which is one of the most poorly performed exercise about with a lot of people placing as much weight on the bar as possible instead of thinking about the correct way of lifting it off the ground. In dead-lifting you must make sure that you do not round or hyper-extend your back as this can cause lower back injury. The hips must be kept high and should not drop during the lift and when pulling the weight lock your knees and hips at the top before bringing your hips back,bending your knees to bring the bar back to its original position. Another compound lift that is done with poor form is the bench press. Bench press is a favourite amongst gym goers with many young lads trying to out do each other. However performing this exercise wrong can have severe implications such as dropping the bar on yourself or placing undo pressure on your back. During the lift the bar should be brought down touching the chest in line with the nipple line and be pushed back up with your feet firmly on the ground and shoulders against the bench. This should be done without rounding the back or lifting the legs of the ground . Elbows should be sticking out as you are trying to target the chest muscles and not the triceps which will be taking most of the pressure if the elbows are tucked in. A good website which shows and clearly demonstrates the correct form for each exercise is www.stronglifts.com.
Time Under Tension
Time under tension refers the time time the muscle is spent under the tension of the weight being lifted. For example, if someone was performing a dumbbell chest press and on the way down they took 3 seconds then the muscle was under tension for 3 seconds. Usually in programs you will see three number in order such as 2:1:2 which basically means two seconds on the way down, 1 second at the bottom and 2 seconds on the way back up. Time under tension is great for building muscle as the muscle is placed under a sustained pressure for a given time. In order to do this a lighter weight may be required and the rep range is best kept between 10-15 reps for hypertrophy. By slowing down the lift it allows the person performing it to have a better mind muscle connection meaning that they can feel the muscle working and understand how it is working. A longer period under pressure causes more tiny tears in the muscle which are then rebuilt during the recovery period leading to the growth in muscle tissue as your body attempts to adapt to the new pressures put on it.
