You could be, and I hope you are, excited about progress that you might be making toward keeping a commitment (my new word for habit). As you keep the commitment, you will get better at it. You will add more to the commitment as you increase your capability and capacity. Here is a potential challenge. You could, in your quest to add more of a good thing, start to lose proper form.
I hate to say it, because I do not want to believe it, but a small amount with proper form, is always going to be better then a high quantity. In other words, quality is really better then quantity. I will attempt an example. Many of us have probably tried weight lifting at some point in our life and we probably have all experienced a bicep curl. This dreaded concept is about taking some weight and with either one hand or two hands lifting that weight by using your bicep muscle. The motion is to take your arm in a straight condition and bend at your elbow and bring the weight up to where you arm is at a 90 degree angle or less.
This is called an isolation lifting exercise, targeted at one muscle. Done properly and the exercise is extremely good at targeting that one particular muscle, as opposed to a compound exercise that works out multiple muscles at once. Next time you go to a gym, watch the big beefy dudes that do bicep curls. MOST of them, are not doing an isolation exercise. They are trying to impress everyone with how much they can “curl.” In reality they are swinging that weight with a compound of muscles, they put their hips, quads, back, shoulders into the motion. If they were to lift the same weight with just the isolation move, they could not lift that much – effectively somewhere along the way they have lost form.
When you lose form, things start to go wrong and this is just not with exercise. It is with almost everything in life. It is difficult to look at yourself with awareness and decide that you have lost form, and go back and carefully determine just the correct quantity for you to do proper form and then increase from their. Mr. Muscle head might have to realize – that he will have to put the 150 pound dumbbell down for the 75 pound one and get his form right. Only then will he truly be getting the full benefit of the isolation. Of course he will have to swallow a lot of pride to do that. I dare you next time you see someone swinging that dumbbell around using their back and not their bicep to comment – “geez, I wonder how much you could lift it if you were doing it right?”
I wonder how effective your 365 list would be if you did it right? Meaning, with meaning, with prayer, with focus in the morning rather then just a quick list and a disingenuous prayer. How much more effective would your life be if you worried more about your form and less about what people think of you.
Guy Reams (308)
365 Member
