You should not excessively flex or extend, protract or retract your neck. If individuals continue to maintain this poor posture, muscles around the neck will become overworked and sore. If continued over time, postural imbalances will occur.

Eyes lead the way. When doing exercises which require an element of balance maintaining a fixed gaze will assist.

When people fatigue, particularly in the chest press, people lift their shoulders off of the bench. The shoulder blades should remain on the bench at all times. (See 5 points of contact later)

Keeping your knees soft lowers your centre of gravity and makes you more grounded. It also prevents people from leaning backwards when lifting weights in front of them.
Try for yourself: Stand straight with knees locked out and get someone to push you gently from one side. Now bend your knees slightly and try again. Notice the difference?

We all know the gait cycle and the importance of having a heel strike. This is no different to standing/sitting/laying and lifting weights. Push through the heels when lifting and make sure they stay down when doing exercises such as squats.  Equally heels need the knee to absorb shock, whereas the ankle can be used if you are on your toes! It is also an athletic stance! So there is a balance to be had here. Sometimes form can be facilitated by focusing on driving the movement through the heel or keeping the pressure through the heel.

When doing exercises such as the lateral raise, when a weight is too heavy people are unable to lift and maintain their elbows in line with their shoulders. This is like doing a step up but stopping before you’re on the step – you just wouldn’t do it would you. Lower the weight, stand in front of a mirror so you can see what you are doing and try again.

You should not excessively lift the shoulders. Certain exercises such as pull ups and shoulder press can encourage people to lift their shoulders too high. Generally this happens when a weight is too heavy or they are poor at proprioception. For the shoulders to raise, nine times out of ten, the arms will be fully extended too – this means that whichever muscles is meant to be working (for example the biceps in the biceps curl) is actually resting.
Try for yourself: try and figure out a way of helping people to realise when they are lifting their shoulders and how can you teach them to prevent it?

Certain exercises require the natural arch in the spine. It’s called natural for a reason. The curves that we have provide the strongest passive position for the spine.

When doing exercises any lower limb weight bearing exercise such as squats and lunges, a weakness, most commonly Gluteus Medias can cause knees knocking in (Valgus). When making the exercise more challenging, for example increasing the weights or adding in rotation this further increases the chances of knocked knees.
Try for yourself: Do a lunge and rotation without allowing the knees to knock in. Too easy? Load up with some weight. Still too easy? Hold a weight above your head.

Everyone has heard the term ‘lift with your legs and not with your back’. Essentially this is a simple way of telling everyone to use the deadlift technique when lifting anything off the floor (or higher for that matter). It is amazing however how many people still don’t get what it means… or even if they understand, can’t physically adjust their body to maintain a straight back when lifting. In order to lift heavy properly with good form requires a strong core (and obviously technique). You may have seen those people with belt around their waist in the gym… this is a way to compensate for weakness and so it is important not to become dependent on this type of aid. No offence is meant to be caused to any Olympic lifter!

If you are pushing through your heels like you should be, you should be able to wiggle your toes…
Try for yourself: Squat and wiggle your toes. Can you? If not, try and adjust your form. Get people to watch you/ look in a mirror to make sure you’re now not compensating with anything else.

Unless you are doing the swing exercise you should not be swinging. If you are swaying back and forth, or the weights are, you’re either lazy/ not using your core properly or the weights are too heavy for you. Generally it’s the latter. But, in order to prevent swinging, brace your core and bend your knees slightly.

If the weights are swinging and you are unable to control them, there is a 99% chance that they are too heavy for you. Drop the weights down, perfect your technique, and then build back up gradually. It may look impressive bicep curling 80Kg, however to those that know what’s right and what’s wrong, you just look stupid and it’s much more impressive curling 40Kg with perfect form!
Try for yourself: Bicep curl as much weight as you can with perfect form, as in, DON’T SWING! What is your 1 rep max?

When you tell people to not knock their knees in, some people over compensate and go too wide. We’re not trying to be ballet dancers here, so we need knees over toes (but not too – we’ll come to that next).

Allowing the knees to go too far over the toes puts excess stress on joints and soft tissue which can’t necessarily take it.
Try for yourself: Do a squat and a lunge allowing the knees to go as far over the toes as possible. Now do it again making sure that they do not go over the toes. What muscles could you feel working more in each different position? What felt more comfortable?

If you twist during exercises which are meant to stay within one plane, some muscles will be overworked, and some underworked. If this is repeated over and over again, muscle imbalances will occur and this could lead to injury and further complications such as joint restrictions. If you are unable to prevent twisting – you’ve probably got a weak core.

When trying to train your triceps for example, your elbows should stay as close to your body as possible. So when doing a triceps press up, they should skim your sides and when doing an overhead triceps extension the elbows need to be as close to your ears as possible. When people get tired, the arms magically get further and further away from the body and surprise, surprise, the triceps don’t seem to feel it as much.

When lunging and during split squats people like to stretch rather than work their quads. If you’re back leg is straight when you lunge you are essentially just making a hip flexor stretch hard for yourself. Keep your hips and knees at 90 degrees, which means also staying upright. When coming up from a lunge people tend to lean forwards, bringing their chest over their knees or backwards in an attempt to bring their weight off their front foot and onto the back foot instead of making the front leg do the work.
Try for yourself: Do a lunge with a wide stance and lean forward. Do a lunge with a wide stance and keep upright. Do a normal lunge and lean forward. Now do a normal lunge with 90 degrees at the hips and knees. What do you notice that is different between all the variations?

If you do a bench press for example and do not go all the way down so that the bar almost touches your chest, you will only be working the muscle fibres within the range that you are training. Generally if you cannot complete a full rep through the full range the weight is too heavy. Drop the weight and build back up again. You’ll thank yourself in the long run.
On the other hand, try not to lock your joints out at the end of the move, so for the bench press try not to lock your elbows out when the bar is above you. This means that your chest and triceps are having a rest. Ideally you want to keep them working throughout the whole set.

Generally this happens most with planks and press ups and their variations. Usually this is due to a weak core and/or proprioception deficit.

Other than this being very similar to allowing the bottom to dip or lift during plank exercises, this is very common in deadlifts and bent over rows. Similarly, this is due to a weak core or a proprioception deficit, or both. If a back is arched excessively, pressure is applied to muscles and joints which may not be able to cope. Maintaining a straight back is vital especially when lifting heavy or twisting.

There is a worldwide phenomenon that a good squat ends at 90 degrees. However, you only need to spend one day in Asia to notice that a lot of people can squat with their bottom centimetres off of the ground. The phase of squatting to 90 is due to that being the squatting angle in competitions. Why should we stop there though? A lot of people are unable to squat past 90 or even to 90 for that matter, due to their back rounding and the bottom dipping. This can cause excess pressure on the lower back and the majority of people will not be able to come out of the squat with good form. BUT, there are ways around it.
Try for yourself: Come up with variations of the squat exercise to help people squat lower whilst maintaining a straight back. Hint – there are some videos on the EST Physio Form website for inspiration.

You will notice a lot of exercises where people compensate by allowing their shoulder blades to wing. This is a bad habit and needs to be broken.
Try for yourself: Note down all the exercises where people allow their shoulder blades to wing where they shouldn’t… You may be surprised at the amount of people who do this.

During deadlifts in particular, you will notice a lot of people lift their bottom first and then start to lift with their chest. This puts a lot of strain on the lower back. Your legs are big powerful, strong muscles, however your lower back isn’t designed to be put under that much force. Being able to lift equally through your hips and chest will prevent excess strain being placed on the lower back and prevent injuries… it will also help you lift heavier!

You core is essentially the middle of your body. The core consists of your transversus abdominus, internal and external oblique’s, pelvic floor muscles, diaphragm and multifidus. Imagine these muscles act as a box and when lifting any sort of weight you are meant to brace – above, below, in front, behind and either side