When you lift weights with poor form, you risk injury. While practising often helps poor form, sometimes the real culprit is really the lack of aerobic capacity. Here’s why this occurs and what you can do about it.
Picture: Carlos Varela
Tony Gentilcore explains the relationship between aerobic capacity and lifting form on T-Nation:
A lack of work capacity (which ties into aerobic capacity) may be a reason why you’re always hurt. Fatigue matters, and it will affect your performance when lifting — especially when training with high(er) reps. The sooner someone fatigues, the sooner technique is going to break down. And having poor aerobic conditioning is going to be a factor, even if you’re a powerlifter.
If you feel like your aerobic capacity has room for improvement, there are a few ways to go about it:
- If you’re currently sedentary, even adding a few brisk walks during the week will do the trick at the start.
- You can also increase your cardio ability by starting a plan like Couch to 5k.
- If you can’t stomach cardio (like me), widowmakers (20-rep squats of any sorts), circuit training, prowler pushes or “lifting weights faster” are suitable options as well.
- Lastly losing a significant amount of weight (if you have a lot to lose) will always help.
T-Nation goes through some other causes of chronic injury, so check out the link below for more.
6 Reasons Why You’re Always Hurt [T-Nation]
Comments