I adore the topic of this episode. The idea of lifting technique is the literal reason I created Movement 101 in 2017 after rehabbing from a back injury that happened during squatting back in 2014-ish.

Now, I would be lying if I said that this back injury didn’t lead to me becoming a bit of a movement elitist. I’ve used this term before. And for me, it refers to this belief that one way to lift is the best way, that buffer zones are dangerous, and that pain is caused by bad movement patterns. It’s an aggressive and quite frankly tainted viewpoint. Which makes sense, because for me, it was formed in light of a pretty daunting injury.

This becomes a dangerous view because, one, it’s based in fear. It also doesn’t take into account bio individuality of the person who is performing the lifts. And it denies the truth that we can have perfect form and experience pain. And we can also have poor form and not experience pain. These things are not always dependent on one another. Lifting technique is not that black-and-white. So in today’s episode we are going to focus on some key principles that are very important within lifting technique and why they are important. Because there are certainly principles based in bio mechanics that are objective truths.

There are also pieces to training movement technique that lead to positive byproducts. And lifting technique is equally as important for those results.

While becoming a movement elitist is often based around fear or black-and-white thinking, there is definitely truth to the fact that positive lifting technique, or quality lifting technique does have a large safety component to it.

The safety that comes from quality lifting technique is often based in efficiency.

We want to generally move the body in the most efficient way possible, or the most mechanically advantageous way possible. Meaning that we are getting the most out of our movement patterns in the safest way that we can. And that’s really what lifting technique does.

It builds quality movement patterns. As a little caveat, I have had a conversation with one of my Physical Therapy friends and movement technique is important, but movement variety is also important. Because by drilling the same exact movement patterns over and over again, underload, for years or decades, we can actually end up limiting ourselves, and causing overuse injuries. That’s some thing that has come up for me personally in my training while I was pregnant. Before I was pregnant I started following the a TG program, and then during my pregnancy I transitioned into following the MamaSteFit prenatal program. And both of these exposed planes of movement and different types of rotation, or just different movement patterns that I had clearly neglected through programming for myself for almost 10 years. I say that because often times I think that when we talk about movement technique we veer towards the big lifts or the big movement patterns of squat, hinge, push, pull and carry. But all movement has technique involved, and quality technique is important for proficiency.

You’ve likely heard me talk about proficiency on other episodes in regard to building both larger muscle cells, and hypertrophy, as well as overall strength.

Having quality lifting technique and building repeatable neural pathways from your nervous system to the motor units that you are recruiting within each muscle fiber is going to be beneficial for putting on muscle and building strength. Strength is a skill, movement patterns are a skill, which is why having good lifting technique is going to be beneficial to you. From a safety standpoint,