What is “Proper Form”?
It is a commonly held belief that the form and technique you use in the gym is important. Many coaches and trainers will express the importance of learning “proper form” before progressing to heavier weights. The problem however arises when trying to determine what exactly “proper form” is. This article aims to give insight into my approach to analyzing and teaching form to my clients. I will be using the squat as an example exercise to apply the approach I take to form. I do want to provide a disclaimer that this will not be an extensive explanation of squat form, but rather a generalized approach to form that can be used for any exercise you do in the gym, with some example applications to squatting.
Before we get started, I would like to provide some working definitions for form and technique. As you can imagine, these two terms will be showing up frequently in this article. As such, I feel it is important to establish an understanding of what I am referring to when I use either of these terms. I like to use the analogy of learning to play an instrument when defining exercise form and technique. Within this article, and in my practice, I use the term “form” to refer to what an exercise looks like when being performed. Form is the overall resulting movement produced during that exercise. Within the analogy of learning an instrument, say the guitar, exercise form would be equivalent to the sound produced by you playing the guitar. The term technique refers to the specific things you do to execute the exercise, what positions you take, and the parts of the exercise that you focus on during execution. The technique or techniques that you decide to implement for a given exercise will influence what your overall form ends up being, or what the exercise as a whole looks like. The same can be said for technique in playing guitar. You can change the way you place your fingers on the strings, how you transition your fingers between notes, and how you strum the guitar. Just as the techniques you use in playing the guitar will produce a certain sound, the techniques you use in a given exercise will produce a certain form. With that understanding of what I am referring to with form and technique, let’s get started.
First off, I think it is important to understand that there are no one-size-fits-all solutions to form for any given exercise that you will perform in the gym. Rather, Quality form involves the techniques that you use to complete an exercise that produces the best results for the goal of the exercise. Taking the time to work on your form for each exercise and figuring out what works best for you is an important ingredient to making the best progress in the gym that you can. The process takes a lot of patience, time, practice, and revisiting across your entire lifting career. As you make progress in your training your form will adjust and adapt, sometimes purposefully, and sometimes without you realizing it. What works best for you will change as your body changes and your training goals change. This is a normal part of progression and why developing an understanding of form and how to make adjustments to it can be very beneficial to your training. There will be a lot of guess and check work involved as you learn and make adjustments to your technique. The form that you use for each exercise will be dependent on multiple factors, including but not limited to:
The general guiding principles of the given exercise.
The specific muscle or muscles that work to perform said exercise, and how those muscles contribute to the performance of the exercise.
Your individual, unique anatomical structure.
The equipment you are using to perform the exercise, as well as how you are using the equipment.
Your level of experience with lifting as well as your experience in performing said exercise along with the goal you have for including the exercise in your training program.
the general guiding principles of the given exercise
With any exercise, there are going to be general guiding principles that provide a basic framework for the exercise, upon which the form is built. I like to think of these principles as the basic building blocks that create the foundation of an exercise.
- Let’s use squats as an example -
We could come up with a basic definition of a squat as an exercise in which you lower your hips from a standing position by flexing at your knees and your hips until you reach a desired depth, from which you return to your initial standing position.
From this basic definition, we can get some guiding principles.
Begin in a standing position
Your knees will bend
Your hips will bend
Squat to some depth
Finish in the standing position
There is one other guiding principle that could be added that is not given by this basic definition of a squat.
Maintain weight distribution (center of gravity) evenly over the middle of the feet.
From a biomechanics perspective, in the most ideal conditions, we can determine that keeping weight distribution even over the middle of the feet will allow for the most efficient application of force in the squat.
However, from a practical application standpoint, there will be a wider acceptable range of where our weight distribution stays somewhere around the middle of the feet. Later in this article, I will go deeper into what I mean by an acceptable range of form. For now, maintaining weight distribution evenly over the middle of the feet gives us an idea to build upon.
The specific muscle or muscles that work to perform said exercise, and how those muscles contribute to the performance of the exercise.
Once we have our basic guiding principles, it is important to understand what muscle or muscles are being worked and how those muscles are contributing to the completion of the exercise.
Returning to our squat example, we see that it is a compound exercise that requires the contribution of multiple muscles to be completed.
Your quadriceps and glutes are the prime movers in a squat (the muscles that generate the primary force needed to complete the exercise).
The quadriceps provide the force needed to control your descent as your knees flex. They then provide the force needed to extend your knees as you ascend from the bottom of your squat.
The glutes provide the force needed to control your descent as your hips flex. Then, the glutes provide the force necessary to extend your hips as you return to your standing position.
Your quads and glutes are not the only muscles involved, however. Your core muscles (abdominals, obliques, spinal erectors, lats) as well as your hamstrings play synergistic roles in the squat.
Your core muscles contract, working together to stabilize your spine and keep your torso rigid to allow for efficient force transfer from your legs to the load you are lifting.
Your hamstrings also contract as you descend to contribute to stabilizing your knee joint, as well as contracting as you stand, assisting the glutes in hip extension.
Many more muscles play a role in the squat, but for our purposes here it is unnecessary to enumerate them all.
From an understanding of the guiding principles and the muscles involved in a given exercise, we can begin to develop a general idea of what good form may look like for that exercise.
With our squat example, we could start building our idea of general form on top of our basic definition.
A squat is an exercise in which you begin in a standing position, engage your core muscles to support your spine, and stabilize your torso. You lower your hips from that standing position by flexing your knees and your hips until you reach a desired depth. From that desired depth, your quads will contract, working to extend your knees to begin your ascent. As you ascend, your glutes, with some assistance from your hamstrings, will contract to extend your hips returning to your original standing position with your knees and hips extended. Throughout the squat, it is important to maintain the center of gravity somewhere within a range over the middle of your feet for the most efficient application of force from your working muscles to the load you are attempting to lift.
This definition of a squat, while more in-depth than our previous definition, is still broad and is going to generally apply to every person performing a squat movement in the gym.
Your individual, unique anatomical structure.
Before going further into the idea of making individualized adjustments based on anatomical structure, it is important to have an understanding of what that term means. The term anatomical structure may seem pretty self-explanatory, but it is still important to define. In our context of exercise form and technique, the term refers to anything concerning the physical structure of your body that would impact your performance of a given exercise. Some examples of anatomical structures that impact a given exercise would be joint shape, joint angle, limb length and size, muscle origin and insertion points, and muscle fiber pennation angle. Some factors are more easily accounted for, such as limb length and size, whereas others are much harder to measure, such as muscle fiber pennation angle.
With that definition in mind and a more in-depth understanding (but still general definition) of an exercise, we can start to make specific technique decisions and adjustments for your individual anatomical structure with consideration of the joints that will be involved in completing the exercise. These specific adjustments are going to help you find the form that works best for you in any given exercise. This is where a lot of the guess and check work is going to come into play. We have a general idea in mind of what the movement pattern of the exercise may look like when performed successfully. The technique adjustments that you make will be made with the goal of getting the desired movement pattern of the exercise to occur and then, through practice and repetition, occur consistently. The individual adjustments that you make will be specific to each exercise, and specific to your needs within what your anatomy will allow. Let's see what that may look like by furthering our squat example and asking the question, “How wide should my stance be when I am squatting?”
While multiple factors can be considered when determining squat stance width. We will focus on one. The ratio of lower and upper leg length. This leg length relationship will influence your ability to maintain balanced weight distribution within the desired range over the middle of your feet in a squat.
Typically, your lower leg (tibia) will be shorter than your upper leg (femur). On average the tibia to femur length ratio is 1:1.28. (Aitken, Stuart. 2021) This relationship varies from person to person. The ratio of the tibia to femur leg length will determine how far your hips and/or knees will need to travel horizontally as you lower yourself into the bottom position of the squat (your hips will go back, and your knees will go forward). This displacement of your knees and hips will affect your ability to maintain weight distribution balanced over the middle of your foot.
An individual for whom the ratio in which the femur is significantly longer than the tibia, higher than the ratio above, will have their hips and knees traveling further horizontally as they squat in comparison to an individual who has a shorter femur to tibia ratio.
How far the knees and hips travel will influence the positioning of the torso to maintain a balanced weight distribution over the middle of the feet. How far back a person’s hips travel in the squat will determine the degree of their torso angle at the bottom of the squat, increasing that angle as the hips travel further back. There will come a point in which the torso angle will be inefficient or unsustainable for the individual performing the squat.
If an individual with a greater tibia-to-femur ratio struggles with getting deep into the squat due to their hips going further back, forcing them into a torso angle too difficult to maintain, we can make adjustments to their squat stance to reduce their torso angle. By taking a wider stance, and turning the toe angle out a few degrees more, we can displace some of the femur length to the side rather than back. This wider stance will result in the hips traveling less horizontally as they squat, allowing them to maintain a more shallow, sustainable torso angle.
An important way to think about working on form for a given exercise is by working toward a range of possible forms that are available to you. This applies to what I have said about the acceptable range of weight distribution over the middle of the foot in a squat. There is an “ideal” form that would provide the best possible results for you in that exercise. The best possible results being the most efficient force output that provides the most stimulus for adaptation. It is a noble pursuit to strive for ideal form, however, what is ideal form is ever-changing and quite elusive, leading to a near-impossible task. Whatever would be your ideal form for a given exercise can truly only be ideal for a single instance of performing that exercise. There are A LOT of factors that go into determining what ideal form is, many of which can and will change over time. Some of those factors can change even just over the course of a day. These factors can include but are not limited to:
Your current strength level
Your current body composition
Your current level of rest and recovery
Your current injury status
The equipment you are using
Equipment quality and specifications can vary widely between different brands and between gyms.
It is very difficult to nail down the exact, ideal form for an exercise for any individual, let alone provide a prescriptive description of the ideal form that works for everyone. Therefore, when it comes to determining the correct form for you, it is better to strive for a range of possible forms around the “ideal” that provide you somewhat less, but still very high-quality stimulus for adaptation. It is within this range of forms that you will get your best results. This range will help account for many of the smaller changes in the factors that affect your overall “ideal” form.
For instance, if you are in the process of gaining weight, your squat form is going to be influenced by the change in body composition that comes with weight gain. If you were to attempt to lift with exact, ideal form you would have to make specific adjustments to your squat form each time you squatted to account for how much weight you have gained, and where on your body that weight has been added. However, if you were to establish a range of suitable squat forms, you would not have to make specific adjustments for each and every squat session. Instead, that established range of quality form would account for much if not all of your potential weight gain, and allow you to continue squatting throughout your gaining period without having to think too much about making changes to your squat form.
This section on individual anatomy is quite long in comparison to the others. That is not by accident. In most cases, unique anatomical structures will have the most influence over the form practice. It is also important to keep in mind that your anatomical structure is not a fixed thing. It will change as you progress in the gym, or if you take an extended break from lifting (Interests change, life happens, that’s ok!). It will change as you age and the natural aging process occurs. Your form will probably never be ideal or perfect, and that is ok! Being perfect in your form is not important, and attempting to be can lead to a lot of frustration and stalled progression, and sometimes regression. Find a form that works well enough for you to start performing the exercise with some confidence and begin progressing. As you progress and adapt you can adjust your form as well.
The equipment you are using to perform the exercise, as well as how you are using the equipment.
For many exercises you do in the gym, you will be able to do different variations by changing the equipment you use. The equipment you use as well as how you are using that equipment will determine what variation of the exercise you are performing. Depending on the exercise, there will be many different variations at your disposal. Squats are an example of an exercise with which you can use a lot of different equipment to accommodate many variations. Here are a few examples.
Barbell
Back squat
High bar
Low bar
Front Squat
Overhead Squat
Dumbbell
Goblet Squat
Front Rack Squat
Belt Squat
There are many more variations of a squat you can perform with a barbell or dumbbells as well as other equipment you could find at the gym. With each variation, there will be adjustments made to your form to accommodate the external forces of the equipment you are using. Let’s compare barbell back squats with barbell front squats.
With a barbell back squat, you are holding a barbell in place on the back of your shoulders to add load to your squat. This addition of load onto the back of your shoulders will change your overall center of gravity, moving it up and back to some degree depending on your bar placement and how much weight you use. The same general principles of squatting still apply and we will want to keep our weight distribution, our center of gravity, even over the middle of our feet as we squat. If we use the same squat stance as we do with a bodyweight squat, our torso angle will have to increase, shifting our shoulders forward to some degree, to offset the change in our center of gravity.
A barbell front squat will tend to have the opposite effect on our torso angle in our squat form. In a front squat, we are now placing the barbell on the front of our shoulders at the base of our neck, commonly referred to as the front rack position. This placement of the barbell now shifts our center of gravity up and forward to some degree. Therefore, to maintain our weight evenly distributed over the middle of our feet, we will need to keep our torso more upright, at a shallower angle.
When thinking about what adjustments to your form you may need to make when using different equipment in the gym, keep in mind how the addition of the equipment is going to affect the overall weight distribution in the exercise. Once you determine the effect the chosen equipment will have, you can use the general principles of the exercise to help you decide what changes may need to be made to your form to accommodate the external forces.
Your level of experience with lifting as well as your experience in performing said exercise along with the goal you have for including the exercise in your training program.
Just as there are no one-size-fits-all solutions to form that is going to work for everyone, there is no one-size-fits-all form solution for a given exercise that is going to last you a lifetime of lifting weights. Over time as your overall experience with lifting increases, as your body composition changes, as your goals in the gym change, as your skill at performing a given exercise changes, so too will your form for the exercises you perform. Lifting weights is a skill that with practice, just like any other skill, you can increase your proficiency level. And just like any other skill, the techniques you use at the beginner stages evolve and become refined over time not only as you become more proficient, but also as your body changes and adapts to your lifting and with life. It is important to not get overly committed to an exact form for any given exercise and allow your skills as a lifter to grow and adapt over time. In the beginning, your focus on any given exercise should be to practice and adapt your technique to the form that gives you the best overall outcome for that exercise.
For our squat example. Your initial focus should be on finding the form that allows you to comfortably and confidently perform your chosen variation or variations of the exercise. Once you have found the form that works best for you, one that allows you to make consistent progress within that variation, continue to hone your technique and skills in the gym. Your initial goal should be to get good at squatting, just like your goal in learning to play guitar, in the beginning, should be to get good at the basics of playing guitar.
Over time, as you become more skilled, you can start making specific, intentional technique changes to a given exercise to try to get a more specific training effect out of that exercise.
For example, let’s say that after becoming confident in your ability to back squat, you have made some consistent, solid progress on your strength level overall. You decide you want to take some time to focus on increasing the strength of your quadriceps. You can make some decisions about what variation of squats to use as well as what form changes you may need to make to accommodate that goal.
Using our established understanding of the squat, we know that the quadriceps and glutes provide the majority of the force needed to complete a squat. With the quads working to extend the knees and the glutes working to extend the hips.
With that knowledge, we can conclude that if our goal is to use squats as an exercise to increase our quadricep strength, we are going to want to increase the contribution our quads make in completing the squat while reducing the contribution our glutes make in completing the squat.
To do so, we will want to maximize our knee flexion while maintaining a relatively shallow hip-torso angle.
Here is where more guess and check work can come into play, changing where you place the bar on your back or potentially trying front squats. Along with adjusting how you use the equipment, you could try different stance widths to see which one gives you the most knee bend as well as a shallower torso angle while still maintaining balance over the middle of your feet.
Final Thoughts
I understand the desire to want a simple solution to form when it comes to lifting. Weight lifting is difficult and can be intimidating as an activity. Adding in the mental energy and time needed to learn what techniques work best for you can seem like a daunting task. However, the time and mental energy are well worth it, and in fact, will lead to a lot of satisfaction as you accomplish milestones in the gym that you thought were out of reach. Just like any other skill you practice in life, you get out what you put in. And, just like any other skill, you're not gonna be great at it at the start, and that is ok. As you practice your form, you will get stronger and more confident, and as you get stronger and more confident you will learn new techniques and make more adjustments to your form. Form is a process that you will continue to work for as long as you train. You don’t have to let the hesitation of not knowing “proper form” keep you from making progress in the gym. Taking the time to practice your technique and hone your form in the gym will pay off in better results, and more enjoyable training sessions.
If you have any questions or want to learn more about the process of form development, contact Morph Performance today to start working on building the form that works best for you!
Aitken, Stuart. (2021). Normative Values for Femoral Length, Tibial Length, and the Femorotibial Ratio in Adults Using Standing Full-Length Radiography. Osteology. 1. 86-91. 10.3390/osteology1020009.
