Your Form is More Important the Weight You Lift!!!

TLDR: When we are talking about completing exercises and whether it is more important to complete an exercise with as perfect form as possible, or as heavy as possible, form is more important! Form is what makes sure that you are using your muscles correctly, you are getting your full range of motion, strengthening through your full range of motion, and putting yourself at the lowest risk of getting hurt! Going heavier does not mean it is better or more beneficial and it doesn’t mean you are stronger!

Being a physical therapist and somebody who enjoys lifting heavy weights, the question of form vs. resistance (how heavy you are lifting) comes up a ton. These are not the only 2 things that we look at and consider when we talk about movement but they are important and it is one of the most popular questions I get!⁠

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One of the questions and conversations I have a lot with my clients is: "I can go lower on my squat when I have lighter weight, but I can go heavier weight but I just can't get as low or I just change how I'm doing it a little bit. It's better to go heavier though, right? That’s what I usually do." ⁠

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The general thought that seems to come across with lifting is that heavier is better. Somewhere in our human brains, or somewhere along the way of weight lifting becoming more popular and research showing how beneficial it can be to overall health, people made the “connection” that they have to lift heavy, at all costs. But this is not necessarily the case. Now keep in mind, as with everything, it does depend! But in general, your form is more important than resistance!⁠

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Why? Because if you are going heavier but in turn are not completing the movement correctly, you are not necessarily strengthening the muscles in that movement correctly as if you were focusing on form. If you can get lower on a squat with a heavy weight, but you are not actually in the correct form, you are not strengthening the muscles correctly. And/or you could be compensating with other muscles to help make up for the strength that you don’t have but need in order to manage that weight correctly. When you force yourself to use a heavier weight, and end up compensating or not completing the exercise correctly, you can also put yourself at a higher risk for injury! The reason you are more than likely doing the weight lifting to begin with is to help yourself get stronger and healthier, so injuring yourself isn’t going to be the best option for that!

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It's also more beneficial to go through a full range of motion with a lower weight so that you are fully strengthening your muscles! In order to recruit and strengthen all of the muscle fibers in the muscle group you are targeting, you have to complete the full range of motion. If you through a partial range of motion, even if it is with a heavier weight, you are only using that part of your muscle group!⁠ For example, think of a squat again. If you do a squat in perfect form, without a weight, and you can get your butt all the way down, you have now completed a squat through full range of motion for the muscles, and every muscle fiber that is supposed to be working, has had the chance to, allowing the strengthening to occur. Now let’s say you pick up a heavy weight and try again. This time, you complete a squat halfway down before standing back up. You are strengthening the muscle within that range of motion but if you continue to ONLY strengthen that specific range of motion, anything past that is going to be significantly weaker than the rest of the muscle group. We have to recruit ALL of the muscle fibers if we want our whole muscle to be strong and to function properly!

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There's a lot involved to this but this is the basic thought process!⁠ Please feel free to reach out with any questions or thoughts on this topic!

If there is anything specific that you would like to learn about, comment or email me and I am more than happy to talk more about it!

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Dr. Katie

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