explains why what worked for you last year when your life was running well
will fail this year if your life is in a mess.. e conventional approach for dealing with overtraining neglects to con-
sider seriously enough the impact of the circumstances of life outside of the
gym. Training cannot be seen in a vacuum.b. The contribution of exercise technique to overtraining
. Training too much, too often and with poor exercise style—e.g., heaving
instead of pushing, dropping instead of lowering, going too deep when
squatting or dipping, squirming when benching, yanking when deadlifting
and rowing—not only fails to deliver size and strength gains, but wreaks
havoc on your body. Such abuse delivers aches, pains and even serious
injury, and all of this in amongst the frustration that results when no gains
in muscle and might are being produced.. Exercise technique is not about excellent form or terrible form. No one can
use terrible form for long without being forced to stop training through
injury. But very few people use really good exercise technique. e nearer
you are to using perfect exercise technique, the less of a negative effect exer-
cise form is going to have on your body. e poorer your form, the more of
a negative effect the same amount of training will have on your body. Poor
form wears your joints and connective structures down, and takes more out
of your overall recovery abilities.. Good exercise form is important for many reasons, one of them being to
deliver the most positive effect from your training, but with minimum nega-
tive effect. Always keep your form tight. Never loosen it in order to get more
weight on the bar.. Poor form is not only about obviously dreadful technique, but about perver-
sions of exercises that in the short term appear to do no damage, but over
the long term are destructive for many people, e.g., squats with heels raised
excessively, bench presses with a grip too wide or too narrow, pulldowns
with a very wide grip, pulldowns to the rear of the head, overhead presses
with an excessively wide grip, behind-neck pressing, and excessive arching of
the back while bench pressing.