What Is Good Technique?
Good technique in hypertrophy training is technique that checks off four boxes well.
First, good technique must actually target the muscle or muscles you intend to train. If your biceps curls utilize your lower back more than your biceps, you might not have great technique!
Second, good technique provides those target muscles with a robust stimulus. You can target your biceps just fine with curls that only use the top ¼ of their ROM, but you’re missing the biggest stimulus ROM: the stretched position.
Third, your technique must minimize needless fatigue. So long as it doesn’t lower the stimulus even more than it lowers fatigue, a technique adjustment that reduces fatigue or at least prevents it from being sky high is usually a good idea. If you can curl by only moving your elbow joint and not wiggling your whole body along for the ride, you’ll have less fatigue and very likely just as much stimulus.
Lastly, good technique is technique that keeps you safe. Or rather, safer than the alternative ways of doing that exercise. If you spring out of the bottom of a lying dumbbell curl like a cheetah after a gazelle, your connective tissue might have a bad time. But if you gently ease into the bottom position and gently ease out, you’re likely to stay safer and thus continue to make great gains.
Why Have Good Technique?
Because it makes you grow the muscles you want more by letting you hit them more precisely, harder, with higher weekly relative efforts and volumes, and for longer stretches of time without impedance.
Better technique’s precision lets you grow your chest because you’re… actually training your chest, and not just confused about why your front delts and triceps grow like weeds but your chest is, as the French say, “le sad.” Good technique gives you more stimulus to the target muscle, which means every rep and every set causes more growth to be signaled. As long as you’re eating and resting well, this is a recipe for bigger muscles.
Good technique keeps your fatigue low and thus reduces catabolic pathways in the muscle and the whole body that higher local and systemic fatigue activate. And it keeps you performing at your best if it keeps joint and connective tissue fatigue from turning into chronic, effort-inhibiting pain.
Lastly, if you’re injured, you either can’t train the muscle or can’t train it as hard as is ideal. Hard to make the best gains if you don’t have the best training, or any training at all, for that matter.
What Changes with Fatigue
Good technique is cool in theory, but in practice, it gets tough to maintain it through an entire set, especially toward the end of the set as acute fatigue (the burn) sets in. There are at least four reasons why good technique becomes tough to nail when fatigue sets in.
First, when you’re focusing on the muscle stimulus, you might be aware of how the muscle feels, especially when the burn is hitting. This makes your technique better because “just follow the burn” means you have a direct arrow to stimulus. But the very last few reps can start to hurt sort of all over, especially on cardio-intensive movements like squats and deadlifts. When that pain sets in, it can become difficult to feel what muscle is active, and you can thus lose track of your best stimulative groove.
Second, when the pain and breathlessness set in, you might begin to lose focus in general, such that it’s not so much that you can’t find the groove… you forget you were supposed to be looking for it in the first place and are just in survival mode!
Third, when the burn gets gnarly in the last reps, it hurts! And it’s completely natural for your body to try to literally change the technique that’s hurting you into one that hurts you less, by changing the movement path away from using the target muscle and thus reducing the burn, for example. Obviously, this is backwards, but it’s super tempting to fall into!
Lastly, when you’re chasing reps and the last few reps seem super tough, your ego can get the best of you and alter the technique to make those last reps easier so that you don’t have to risk the shame of not hitting your desired rep count for that day. This often happens with an increase in eccentric speed, bringing other muscles into the movement to “help” the target muscle (translation: they help you get the reps, not hit the target muscle), and reducing the ROM.
What Your First Reps Say About Your Technique
The first few reps of a working set tell everyone watching you (you know, the usual crowds that watch you when you lift, lol) if you know what good technique is and if you give enough of a shit to actually implement it. Obviously, because you’re not yet fatigued, the potential excuses for not using good technique on the first few reps of a set are rather sparse!
What Your Last Reps Say About Your Technique
Your last few reps of a tough working set say even more about your technique. They tell you and the world (that’s right, the whole world) if you have what it takes to hold yourself accountable to your highest standards of execution.
“Execution.” That term is an interesting one. I picked it up from pro bodybuilder Kuba Cielen. It’s not synonymous with technique… it’s HOW you execute your technique… like, do you actually stick with it? Good execution is good technique no matter how badly the reps hurt.
Execution is important because in your last few reps, you have the potential to cause the highest levels of stimulus. If your technique is spot on here, it’s going to result in maximum gains. If it’s off, you have the most to lose at the end of the set.
Why Your First and Last Reps Should Be the Same
If you have a technique you consider good for a given exercise, then you execute on it through the whole set. Which, sort of by definition, means the first, middle, and final reps should look the same. They should look the same because the goal is identical on each rep: use your best technique to get the best results.
Don’t just plan… execute. With precision and pride. Remember, the whole world is watching. Okay, fine, just grandma is watching. But like… isn’t grandma in some sense your whole world? See, we ended on a wholesome note! Peace, homies!
Find more from Dr. Mike on…
YouTube: RP Strength