#106: How to improve your weight lifting using form videos

The one thing you’re probably NOT doing—but should be!

If you’re lifting weights but not seeing the results you want, or if something just feels off in your workouts, there’s a simple but often-overlooked fix: checking your form.

When your form isn’t right, you’re not only increasing your risk of injury, you might also be making exercises harder than they need to be (and not in a good way!).

The good news? A quick form check could make ALL the difference.

In this episode, I dive into:

• The benefits of taking form videos
• How to take form videos to improve your lifting technique
• How to spot and fix form mistakes on your own

Resources mentioned in this episode:

🎥 Flip Stick >>

Transcript

#106: How to improve your lifting form using form videos

00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach. Today I am talking about form videos, and this was sparked by an email that I got from one of you, one of my listeners, and I'm going to read you the email first. This is from Joanne, and she said that I can use this on the podcast, so I do have her permission to share.

So she starts with Hello, Lynn. Thank you so much for your fantastic podcast. I've been listening to it. for just over a year and really get a lot from it. From the first episode, I started weight training and although the gains are slow, the overall difference is amazing. My use of technology is minimal, so I have been very reluctant to try videos, but yesterday I did it and oh my god how [00:01:00] scary it is to see myself in action.

But what I learned from the process was truly incredible. Number one. How important it is to smile. LOL. Seeing myself scowling at the screen as I try to work out how to do a video was very scary. 2. Posture. Mind has always been awful, but I didn't realize how much I was slouching even when I thought I was standing straight.

Three, illusion. I thought my form was not too bad after a year of training at home. The video shows me how much my arms flap about while I'm doing my bicep curls, how my elbows are nowhere near my ears when I'm doing a shoulder press. Four. Glamour, style, or lack thereof. Watching myself highlighted to me how much effort must go into producing a video worthy of putting online.

Me, [00:02:00] hair all a mess, face red and blotchy. It's summer here and most days are 30 plus degrees. Not to mention the scowl, coordination lacking, poor posture. And that's before I start to check out my poor technique. So in short, doing the video was probably the most productive training session I have ever had.

Yesterday I listened to episode number 98, I think, and you were answering questions, one of which was how to make weight training less boring. My answer is video yourself. That should highlight plenty of challenges for everyone. Personally, I've never found it boring. There really is a lot to focus on with each exercise.

Kind regards, Joanne. So, I think that was, that was an amazing email. I don't get very many like that, and wow, it really, I [00:03:00] think, speaks to the point of today's podcast, which is videoing yourself. So if you have not dared to do it yet, then please try it out. It is super important for you to get your form down correctly.

I get, form check videos from my clients and customers, students, whatever you want to call them. And I love to give the feedback and particularly on exercises like this. RDLs, which are a little bit harder to learn, but as Joanne points out, even things like bicep curls, tricep exercises, you will notice that your body is maybe not exactly where you think it is, and you probably can spot a lot of errors all by yourself just by looking at the videos.

Or upload them so that you [00:04:00] have the sample video of what the exercise should be looking like and then your video of what it looks like for you. And when you kind of play them side by side or look at them side by side, you'll notice things like if you're looking up when you should be looking down or if your elbows are pointing in a totally different direction than how they should be going.

It is super useful. And one of the reasons that I have so many videos that I can share online, uh, in my reels and everything is that I'm videoing myself pretty often, just to double check because when you're doing the exercises, you can't really be like looking in the mirror at the same time because if you're turning your head the wrong direction, you know, it just really doesn't work.

If you're really focusing on doing those last reps, which are hard, you shouldn't actually be able to be [00:05:00] critiquing yourself at the same time. So I definitely encourage you to do that. 

Okay, but how do you actually get some good videos that you can look at? So the method that I have been using that works really really well is I have bought myself a flip stick Not lipstick, but a flip stick and if you're watching this on YouTube, I'm showing my phone So it's basically just a sticker that you put on the back of your phone So it doesn't make your phone really any fatter than it normally is And the sticker takes up about a third of the back of your phone, so you put it in the middle of the back of your phone.

And when you flip down, you can hear the sound effect maybe, the cover of it, it reveals a very sticky surface. And that sticky surface sticks to just about anything, and then when you kind of [00:06:00] twist, you can remove it from the surface. And then you flip the cover back on, and it's not sticky at all.

And I can still get it into my phone case, no problem, even with that flip stick on the back. So at the gym, what I'll do is I'll look at a piece of equipment that's nearby, and I'll stick it on that piece of equipment. And I try to do it subtly, like I don't choose a piece of equipment that somebody's actually training on at the time.

And, um, and I'll stick it on there, and then press record, do my set, and then go. Twist it off. And if there is somebody there, I'll just say, Hey, I'm taking a technique video. Is that okay? You know, so I'm, and you know, most of the time it's some older gentlemen or whatever, so it's not a problem. And the young kids, they don't care.

And the other option, of course, is to lean it against your water bottle. So I do that as well. So I'll put the water bottle on a [00:07:00] bench or one of those, big squares that you can jump onto. Those are kind of laying around all over the place at my gym, so I will just lean it against the water bottle and I, so with RDLs, for example, that's one of the ones that I check very, very often because of the technique and also Bulgarian split squats and, and, Even, even arm exercises, those are a little harder just because of the way my gym is set up to get the videoing done without getting a lot of other people in the picture.

But in any case, I'll do my first set and video it. And then when I'm waiting my three minutes before my next set, I will watch the video and I'll be like, Oh, okay, this, that and the other or whatever. Um, and then I will improve it afterwards. Now this is something that I did a ton when I started doing RDLs way back, you know, three years ago.

So back then I really needed to look at the videos. [00:08:00] Now it's more just double checking that. I am actually still doing them with correct form, and every now and again, I'll find something that I can improve on. I mean, technique is something you can always improve on. So if we think about Olympic lifters, you know, who are just doing bench press and squat and, um, man, what's the third one?

Heh heh heh heh. Senior moment? Anyway, I mean, they're basically doing the same three exercises, and that's it. And they are constantly perfecting their technique. It's one of the ways that they get to lift more and more and more. So none of us is ever done perfecting our techniques. So for sure you can do this.

And at home, if you're training at home, I mean, come on. You can stick your flip stick on a mirror, on a wall, on a piece of furniture. You can even buy a tripod but then the other thing to keep in mind is What are you [00:09:00] comparing that to? You need to make sure that your instruction on how to do that, that movement is correct.

So there are a lot of instruction videos out there that are not Correct. And a lot of videos that you see online where some personal trainer is there doing an exercise and it's not really being done correctly. So hopefully you have a trusted source who puts videos online. I actually don't share, technique videos online yet.

I've been thinking, do I want to do that? Do I not want to do that? 

So yeah. Anyway, back to the technique thing. So find a video done by somebody that you trust and compare the technique. If you're one of my students, then I've got the videos that are in my app. So Check [00:10:00] those every now and again, even if you looked at in the beginning and you're like, Oh, yeah, bicep curl.

That's what this is. And then you, you know, you know what a bicep curl is, right? I mean, most of us know what a bicep curl is pretty quickly. It's still a good idea. Take a video of yourself doing the bicep curl. Check the video example of what a bicep curl should look like and compare the two and make sure that you're doing it correctly.

I see So many people in the gym where if they could see a video of what they're doing, they would immediately be like, okay, that's not correct. And by the way, I realize I'm like a trained eye, right? I mean, this is, this is what I do obsessively, in my life here. I just remember when I was, um, little, well, and also not so little, but in high school and college, I was a horseback rider.

I did three day eventing. And, and so, I was a horse person and horses would go [00:11:00] lame, which means they would have a, an injury which you could tell, a trained eye could watch a horse trotting What leg it was that was bothering them, you've kind of noticed that, oh, the rhythm is somehow off, but actually being able to identify what in this picture is causing this off requires somewhat of a trained eye.

And I think it, to some degree, it is the same thing with form videos is that. You need to know what to look for to see what's off and, um, and that takes some experience and also some interest in looking at that and training your eye because all those years of horseback riding, and I still couldn't tell you where a horse was lame, but you send me a form video of your RDLs and I can tell you where it might be going wrong.

All right, so takeaway is. The tip that you [00:12:00] are probably missing for improving your weight training is you're not taking your form videos. So try one out. Make that your to do for this week, like your little action point for one exercise. Do one this week and then next week, choose a different one and see if you can improve your technique over time.

All right. And with that, I leave you till next week and wish you happy training.