Awareness?!?
Awareness is rarely ever discussed in weight training workouts. Instead the focus is on moving weight for a given number of reps to reach a goal. Form is talked about like something you want to have like good etiquette at the dinner table. The big thing is did you lift the weight to get the number of reps that have been prescribed. Awareness is left to yoga and Pilates but are not important in the weight room. In some cases the less aware you are the better. What is awareness you might be asking? It is the ability to pay attention to all the given parts of a movement. To hold those parts in awareness while you are lifting a given weight. In my 45 years of being a practitioner of resistance training: competitively, for health and my twenty years as a personal fitness trainer I have come to believe that awareness is the key to a safe, effective and time efficient workout.
What am I basing this own? Is my experience enough? I know that there are good trainers and motor control experts that probably would not agree with me. They would say focus on lifting the weight and the form will take care of it self.
I think that the body is too smart for that and if you determine that you want to lift a weight for a given number of reps your body will find a way to do it that may not consider your safety. How many times do you look around in gyms and see people doing things that are definitely not safe and effective and efficiency are brought into question.
With greater awareness of what is going on I have seen my clients improve there form, create fatigue and lift heavier weights and perform complicated task like cleans maintaining optimal Biomechanics which increases effectiveness and reduces injury.
Building awareness can take time up front but down the road it leads to a more enjoyable and sustainable workout experience. Making changes whether they be weight loss or performance increases take time and need a safe effective and time efficient program to go along with a healthy lifestyle that will create results.
