Your Crash Course to Perfect Form at the Gym: Let's Talk about Your Posture

Part of my studies for certification included watching lots of videos on cueing for exercises. After like, my bazillionth video (lunge jumps?), I was getting bored because the cues were so similar and followed a common pattern; they were all linked to your kinetic chain.

If you’re wondering, “the kinetic chain—is that like, ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’”? (Knees and toes!) Well, you are very close. Your kinetic chain includes your head, shoulders, hips, knees, and feet. Not quite as catchy as what you learned in grade school, I know.

If you ever feel intimidated about going to the gym, or just wonder, “am I doing this right?”, think about these basics listed below and you’ll be off to a great start…

1) Head: keep your ears above your shoulders and your gaze straight ahead. It’s tempting to look down at your feet, but unless you’re checking on your knees and toes, DON’T!

2) Shoulders: Your shoulders should be down away from the ears, especially if you’re lifting something up or overhead. The shoulders should also be back slightly. How far back? I tend to think of it this way: “Confidence, not pride”. You want your shoulders tucked back a little bit, but not so much that you’re sticking your chest out. (A lot of us are hunched over because of our handheld electronic devices, so look out for this!)

3) Hips: For most exercises, you’ll want to keep your hips square, i.e., facing forward. A common way to cue this is to pretend that you have headlights on each of your hipbones. You want both headlights facing forward, not veering off to the side.

Also, Pelvic Tilt!
You want your pelvis to be neutral. Think about those headlights again. If you stick your butt out, your pelvis would tip forward and the headlights would point down (also known in fancy parlance as an “anterior pelvic tilt”). If you tuck your hips under, the beams would point up. Try these two extremes and then find something in the middle. This is neutral pelvis and it is your friend.

4) Knees: Have your knees track in line with your ankles and toes. Watch out for wobbling, especially when you squat or lunge.

5) Feet: Typically you will keep them shoulder-width apart, with your 2nd and 3rd toes pointing forward Think of them as parallel, like being on ski poles.

So the next time you’re at the gym performing an exercise, do a quick check on the above five points and it will clean up your form pretty nicely. People may even come over and ask if you’re an athlete or something, to which you answer OF COURSE I AM.

In future blog posts I’ll talk about the common form mistakes people make and how they relate back to basic posture. This also all ties into the question: what weights should I use for a given exercise?

So stay tuned!