Progress at expense of good form

[sbhikes]

Do you think the focus on adding weight tends to drive the progress people make too fast at the expense of good form? I have heard this criticism from other powerlifting people. The criticism being that the message from this program tends to make people feel inadequate if they are not driving up the weight and thus they end up sacrificing good form.

[Michael Wolf]

Depends on the context. In the context of the Novice Linear Progression, you start with a weight at which you can exhibit proper technique but which just starts to challenge your completely unadapted system at the 5th rep. Almost every healthy person can add weight linearly for a while from that point. And we're always very clear that that process must take place within the context of excellent form.

In general, can one's pursuit of more weight cause form issues that can be problematic? Yes. Is that a valid critique of the SSLP? I don't see how it is. It's a misunderstanding of it.

[sbhikes]

I see. I had someone give me this criticism but I did not have any answer to it. I'm also not really sure how other programs or coaches pursue progress. This is the only program I've ever done or looked at.

[Eric Davis]

I have been thinking about this same problem lately. I have seen remarks about form break downs at near max being acceptable and I generally agreed until lately. But what I have experienced recently is when I fix my form everything seems easier. This seems to make sense in that the model is the model because it is the most efficient way to apply force to that bar on your back, shins, chest, or shoulders (see arguments about best form for the olympic lifts on this site or how similar most world record squats and pulls form are to the SS model) otherwise we would need a different model. So my hypothesis is- form break downs are less efficient making the lift harder thus preventing heavier weights from being lifted. I think injury prevention is a secondary benefit of using the correct form. Does this make sense or is it just me?

[Mac Ward]

Perfect sense.

When we talk about form break down on a near limit attempt, we are saying that we expect it. It's not OK, it's expected. Perfect form will make the lift easier as you have discussed.

[Notrhwoods]

Strength training without a coach is a tricky process. Recently I have started recording my heavy sets. This has helped significantly improved my form.

When you see a recording of yourself doing a heavy set with good form it motivates you to push for heavier weights next time. On the other hand, if you see errors it encourages you to clean up your form before going heavier.

[Gerhard]

You've also got to take risks as well, some people I know who are genetically gifted, just simply refuse to lift heavy or do certain lifts frequently because they fear injury or don't welcome the hard work. These guys would wipe the fucking floor with me and many others if they even had an ounce of drive to Squat, Bench and Deadlift heavy.

I've not had any kind of injury thus far, and I rarely worry about little form glitches I simply make a conscious effort to improve on them as I go and don't set myself back by worrying about them before increasing load or volume. Then again, I use the RPE scale to auto-regulate the squats. If things are getting stupid on Intensity day for example, where I'm working with very heavy weight, the first sign of extreme difficulty on getting past the mid point out of the hole on the Squat - that's where I stop. I've never failed a Squat rep thus far, but I know if I'm going to fail it at this point, it'll be at that stage of the lift, and that's probably the most dangerous part.

[sbhikes]

This is what sort of confuses me. I have managed to get pretty strong with inadequate form. It made me strong enough to do perfect form on weights that at one time would have been impossible. I do not think I could have made the kind of progress I have made without having a few reps at some new PR weight that were pretty ugly. At the same time, if I had a coach watching me every day, he might never let me make progress with ugly reps and I might end up only being able to make progress on those days when the stars align and I feel super strong and everything works perfectly. These are rare days.

So how would you force an old lady's body to make progress on PR-level weights every single workout without any form breakdowns? It's not like I can't tell that my back is rounding or my knees are caving or my depth wasn't there or my press 2.0 became a bit of a standing bench press. I can tell. So what do I do? Do I up the weight next time because on paper I did not miss any reps? Do I count the whole day as a miss and repeat the same weight next time? Do I take a hybrid approach and increase the weight on the number of sets I was able to do perfectly but repeat the previous weight on the sets where my form broke down? What do you do to not let poor form slowly take over in the quest for progress?

[Mac Ward]

So how would you force an old lady's body to make progress on PR-level weights every single workout without any form breakdowns? It's not like I can't tell that my back is rounding or my knees are caving or my depth wasn't there or my press 2.0 became a bit of a standing bench press. I can tell. So what do I do? Do I up the weight next time because on paper I did not miss any reps?

Are you still running linear progression?

[sbhikes]

Are you still running linear progression?

To some extent. I can run it for a while, then usually something happens. I take a nice vacation (I'm going to Hawaii in a month!), I do too much over the weekend, I have an unexplainable day where it seems all my strength has evaporated, I just reach a wall. To the best of my ability I try to be as linear as I can. I even bought some equipment off craigslist so that I could microload presses at home. Now I don't have to do so many of the strategies around random equipment problems recommended in Kyle's article "Managing Compromises." But honestly, I can't seem to achieve perfect linear progress on every single lift every single workout. I can get a few weeks to a few months. But the last time I had a really good run of linear progress, my formal form check sent me back to the starting line so I actually achieved almost nothing.