Chapter 3 Good Form Is Good Form Because It's Good Form. (And It's Undermining the Longevity of Your Joints and Spine)
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. ~Robertson Davies
Dropped in mid-journey? Walk Straight is best experienced from the beginning…
A client arrived in my studio a while back. He took in his surroundings and, with grounded poise, looked me square in the eyes and asked if he could undress. As clients often wore sports shorts under their trousers, I consented, nonplussed by his request. Without missing a beat, he quietly stripped to his shorts and stood tall. The sun peeked through the French doors, creating a spotlight over his chiseled physique. Taking in an audible inhale, he stretched his arms out to his sides, exclaiming, “Look at me.” Then, turning in a slow circle, “My body is perfect. I’ve been trained by the best. So why the hell does everything hurt so goddamn much?”
His delivery was blunt, definitely high scores for performance, but the story wasn’t unique. It was simply a new representation of an oft-repeated narrative. Even bodies doing everything “right” have similar issues to weekend warriors, walkers, desk-bound professionals, fitness junkies and yogi’s alike. Pain doesn’t discriminate. And practicing what we think is perfection turns out not to be protection.
We have come to resign ourselves to discomfort of one kind or another. If something hurts or bugs us, it’s assumed to be something we’re stuck with. We chalk it up to aging, genetics, or the inevitable trade-off for staying fit. If we are careful with form, and so are our trainers, what more can we do? The phrase good form gets thrown around like it means something clear and agreed-upon. But it doesn’t. So what does “good form” mean, exactly? Is it the same, no matter the movement or the goal? Who decided what it is? What was their metric? What was the goal? What assumptions, priorities, and models went into those decisions? And my perennial favorite, why? The inability to answer those questions clearly and specifically is part of what’s made the whole conversation about form and dysfunction so vague, so confusing, and so ineffective.
Wikipedia defines good exercise form as “a specific way of performing a movement, often a strength training exercise, to avoid injury, prevent cheating and increase strength… proper form has two purposes: 1) Avoiding injury: By using proper/good form, the risk of injury is lowered. 2) A lack of proper form commonly results in injury or a lack of effect from the exercise being performed.” I cite Wikipedia as it reflects the language echoed across fitness and medical sites when you search variations of: What is good form in exercise? The trouble is, “proper form” and “good form” don’t actually answer the question, what is it?. They sound authoritative, but they aren’t actionable. What are the specific, mechanical details? The entry continues, “Good form ensures that the movement only uses the main muscles and avoids recruiting secondary muscles. As a muscle fatigues, the body attempts to compensate by recruiting other muscle groups and transferring force generation to non-fatigued units. This reduces the benefits in strength or size gain experienced by the muscles as they are not worked to failure.”
We see this idea of isolating, controlling, and interfering everywhere. To illustrate, I’ll use the cue: “Squeeze your butt.” It’s a simple yet effective example of this approach. When you squeeze your butt, you are forcing the muscles in your butt to shorten and harden. However, you are also changing the position of the thigh bone in the hip socket, inhibiting glide in the hip joint, and interfering with your built-in balance systems. All that from squeezing your ass? Yep. And then some. And yet, it is the most common cue to build booty strength and stabilization. Why? Because the whole system, from instruction to marketing to medicine, has come to accept interference as expertise. I’ve lost track of how many people with chronic back pain, labeled “idiopathic” because no clear cause was found, got relief after I told them to stop clenching their ass! But instead of hearing about these stories, the dominant message that saturates fitness content throughout the virtual and physical industrial complex is squeeze more, engage more, control more! Yikes! Pro tip: The glutes fire in response to internal demand, not imposed action, when the skeleton is supported by its innate systems.
The net net is that we adopted an approach to “good form” that consciously interferes with and micro-manages the body’s innate musculoskeletal systems, inadvertently undermining the longevity of the joints and spine in the process. Begging the question: is it a lack of perceived significance or a disconnect between the approach and repercussions? Or maybe, we’ve just become too impatient, habituated to pursuing short-term goals while inventing fixes and looking for the next shortcut and sound bite.
Indoctrinated by the all-knowing "they", it can be easy to forget that our knowledge and assumptions of the body’s mechanics result from observational studies based on ever-shifting priorities, subjective criteria, and biased versions of perfection. Who we study and how we view their “fitness” dictate our assessment and influence our judgment, unintentionally creating contradictions and blind spots. Hence, our understanding of bodies, the way we teach about them and treat them, is based on metrics established through an interpretive framework, combined with trends, and voila! Rather than basing the gold standard for approaching movement on ensuring comfortable and functional longevity, it is based on bodies that fulfill specific requirements.
At this point, I’d love to tell you what to do, wave a magic wand, and make it stick. But I don’t think you can push against a tsunami without some context and nuance. And frankly, that wouldn’t be interesting to me. Okay, the wand part would be interesting, but honestly, an idea holds better when you know where it came from. So instead, I’m going to bring you along on a journey to discover not just good form, but how to find your form. There’s a lot in this world I do not know, but what I do know is that Nature sure as hell programs nature better than we do. Next up: Why, and the Quagmire of Standing.
*Do you experience discomfort in your day or during exercise, even when practicing good form? If so, please share in the comments! XxD
Sometimes, all it takes is a shift in perspective or a nugget of information considered in a new light to spark the ah-ha moment that changes everything!
I constantly amazed how easy it is not to notice, even when you have learned the form your body need to function optimally. Habits!
You are brilliant!!!!!!