Ego Lifting and Form Control

Here’s what you need to take to the gym: preworkout, lots of water, a towel, a plan and a lot of determination. Want to know what you don’t need to bring? Your ego. Check it at the door. You don’t need to make it any stronger and you definitely don’t need to inflate it when you’re lifting weights.

“Lifting with your ego is the act of lifting or pushing too much weight without the conscious effort of keeping form in the hopes to impress your friends, the opposite sex or a more experienced lifter,” says BodyBuilding.com. It’s a surefire way to injure yourself and if you’re not performing your moves with proper technique, you’re not going to be getting the most effective, efficient workout possible.

Here’s why you’ve got to ditch your ego and focus on your form to have a great workout and chip away at your fitness and physique goals.

Your Ego Is Causing You Pain

When you compromise your form for the benefit of your ego, you’re going to hurt yourself. It’s not a matter of whether you will or you won’t feel the physical repercussions of poor form; it’s a matter of how and when. Proper technique is going to save your muscles and joints from injury. Ego lifting is going to leave you injured and out of the gym.

“This is by far the biggest mistake anyone can perform when they are at any level of training,” says BodyBuilding.com. “You are usually putting yourself in a dangerous position, and injury is at high risk.”

When you pile on too much weight to impress a gym buddy, a cutie on the machine next to you or even yourself, you’re not doing what’s best for your body. Get your ego out of the picture and focus on how you’re going to make yourself strong enough to lift that weight. Proper technique, good form and a reasonably challenging weight are going to get you there.

If you don’t, you could find yourself with an injury to the foot or ankle, the knee, the neck or the dreaded lower back – the five most common weight lifting injuries according to Men’s Fitness. In recent years, there has been a 35% increase in gym injuries. Taking your ego out of the equation can help prevent you from becoming part of the statistic.

“Think of working on your body as a third party,” personal trainer Justin Price, M.A. told Men’s Fitness. “If you remove your ego from the situation, you can be realistic about your goals.”

Your Ego Is Holding You Back

Even if you’re lucky enough not to horribly mangle your body by trying to bench 300 pounds on your first day at the gym, you’re ego is going to hold you back from making progress and improving your body. Wait, but if you lift more, won’t you gain more muscle faster? Not if you’re doing it wrong. Proper technique is going to carry you farther than lifting a stupid amount of weight the wrong way ever will.

Proper form could be the difference between meeting your goals, crushing your goals and coming nowhere near achieving them. “It is the quality of training that influences your progress, more than the quantity,” according to BodyBuildingcom. “Time under tension, angle of movement, range of motion and many other factors all contribute to a particular resistance training session. It is important to understand the proper mechanics of training to get the most benefit from your time.”

To see results, keep a few things in mind when you’re lifting, no matter if it’s your first day in the gym or your thousandth. The first thing to remember is to keep your spine in line. Keeping your back aligned is crucial for achieving proper, effective form and for preventing potentially debilitating injuries. To do this, push your chest up and out and pull your shoulder blades together. “This action of the shoulder blades is known as scapular retraction,” according to BodyBuilding.com, “and is very important for almost all exercises.”

Just like spinal alignment, keeping your joints in line is going to keep you safe and make your movements more effective. Not only is this going to ensure you’re engaging the right muscles when you’re training and not pushing your body beyond its limits, it’s going to help you design a program that can get you to your goals. BodyBuilding.com suggests that if you’re doing a lot of tricep work,  you might want to limit the range of motion in your bench press by keeping your bench press at the shoulder-elbow alignment. Your arms don’t need to go below parallel to achieve a good pump and doing this is going to allow your triceps easier recovery.

Your Ego Is Making You Look Dumb

Here’s the deal: feeding your ego by trying to look impressive at the gym is going to have the exact opposite effect. It’s going to make you look dumb. A quick YouTube or Google Image search for “ego lifting” or “ego lifting fails” is going to show you just how dumb and dangerous lifting for your ego can be.

The harsh truth is, you’re not going to impress anyone. The good news is that you don’t have to. You’re not in the gym to show off; you’re in the gym to better yourself, make incremental improvements to your body and crush your goals. You’re not responsible for anyone but yourself and you’re not there for anyone’s entertainment.

Check Your Ego At The Door

Here’s what you’ve got to do: when you get to the gym, check your ego at the door. Shove it in your locker with your stick of deodorant. Slide it into your duffel with your sweaty socks. You don’t need it at the gym. Really, you don’t need it anywhere.

The best way to gain confidence at the gym is to do it right, work hard and progress, building muscle and self-assurance along the way. You’re not going to feel better, look better or make headway on your goals by showing off or lifting with improper form. So leave the ego behind and get moving, the right way, towards your goals.

Want some real gym inspiration? Look no further than Performance Inspired Nutrition. Find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for some serious motivation, no ego involved.