We’ve all done it haven’t we? Seen a dude or gal who is in the gym, has some skills, is lifting a heavy ass weight over their heads and after they accomplish their lift, instead of saying “Damn, good job yo!” we blurt out “Yeah but… your technique was off, you didn’t do it right.”

Yeah? STFU!

Let me put out a clear warning before I get started with this whole mess about “technique” because I know not doing so is going to give some douchebag the wrong idea and he’ll email me saying that I’m an ass for saying technique isn’t important.

I’m not saying that. What I am saying is that we need to recognize an obvious factor that has a huge effect on your technique.

This factor is called weight.

When the load is at 135lbs, my benchpress technique is pretty much perfect. I lift the powerlifter way, so that means there is an arch, the weight is all loaded on the traps, wrists are tight making a straight line with my forearms, shoulder blades are tight and elbows tucked. And same goes for when I bench the “normal” way, it’s clean. It doesn’t matter what type of technique I do, at such a light weight it’s solid.

But at 235? That’s a whole different story (Keep in mind I’m just nudging 140lbs at a body fat that’s about 6%). No way in hell do my wrists stay perfectly straight. Elbows aren’t as neatly tucked… but does that mean I stop lifting heavy? Hell no. When you’re pressing twice your body weight over your head, it’s a whole different world. 3x your body weight and you’re on another planet compared to most people. 4x your body weight? You should consider competing.

Technique and Weight have something called an “inverse” relationship… or in simpler worlds, on a scale of 1-10 (10 being best), the cleanliness of your technique starts to dip as the load on the bar gets higher. It’s inevitable.

I Call It Sweet Spot, You Call It G Spot

Take a look at the graph below…  

That red dot represents the sweet spot – a place where your technique is considered solid at a given weight. Now obviously, what’s considered “solid” is debateable, so don’t take those numbers first hand. They are there just to make a point. In reality that graph should not even show a technique perfection line below 85%.

The point is, everyone’s sweet spot is different. What we need to do (instead of critiquing everything so anally) is work on getting that sweet spot to a whole new level… which in turn will shift the entire graph. If your deadlift is a little wonky at 200lbs but awesome at 160lbs, then you better make damn sure that in the coming months, that 200lbs is your new sweet spot. This is called progress folks.

And what happens when you raise your sweet spot? You can lift heavier! Isn’t that interesting. This statement seems obvious… until you realize how many keyboard jockeys there are who run their mouths. Or in short, KJ’s.

“OMFG! His knees are 2.37 inches in front of his toes!”

Who are KJ’s? These are the people who talk a whole bunch of whack about technique, exercise selection etc. but in reality they don’t do jack shit. They aren’t the ones actually in the gym doing the lifting, they are sitting at home on YouTube critiquing a video of a guy who actually had the balls to lift more than they ever will in their fucking lives.

So let’s drop the KJ mentality and work on raising that sweet spot. Even if you can lift 3x your weight with near-perfect technique, realize that there are more average joes running around then people who can hoist that much load. You are not the norm. So when someone is trying, give props where props are due. When it really comes down to it, as long as you aren’t hideously butchering the technique, and have a good warm up/stretch program in place, good enough is good enough, and great can always get better. You’ll be fine. Just lift!

And for those that don’t lift weights at all… seriously, you need to get on that shit ASAP.

- FitJerk

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