In our last article on barbell training technique, we began answering the question, “does barbell training technique matter?”
We introduced the concept that, for athletes working with barbells, it does not matter what lifting technique you choose to implement so long as you identify how to optimize it for your body.
Within the PRS Sustainable Training Method, we guide our decision-making process for individualizing barbell technique and powerlifting programming based on the following 4 Core Goals:
Maximizing strength and muscular development
Reducing injury risk
Optimizing goal attainment
Instilling longevity in one’s ability to train
We identify and optimize your technical execution with any barbell lift via the 9 Elements of Safe & Effective Barbell Training.
For a complete understanding of the 9 Elements of Safe & Effective Barbell training, check out our last article on Barbell Technique or this PRS Podcast Episode.
To summarize, these nine elements create criteria applicable to any barbell training lift you choose to do and allows you to optimize the movement (stance, grip, eye gaze, etc.) based on your individual body. These nine elements help answer the question:
“What barbell technique is best, safest, and most optimal for me?”
We divide these elements into two categories: Balance and Force Transfer. They help you optimize your interaction with the barbell and gravity to lift as much weight as you can and get as strong as you can with the least risk for injury possible.
However, how you maintain your individual technical execution of a barbell lift from rep to rep within a set and from training session to training session over time also matters.
In this article, we discuss two additional components of barbell training techniques and powerlifting: Technique Breakdown and Form Creep. These will assist you in our version of “injury prevention,” aka injury risk reduction, and help you optimize your strength development, goal attainment, and sustainability under the barbell.
In our last article, we alluded to the fact that within the PRS Sustainable Training Method we will not impose a specific type of lift on you. If you want to do the high bar back squat and sumo deadlift, that’s fine. If you want to do the low bar back squat and trap bar deadlift as your main strength lifts, that’s fine too.
Might we encourage you to do barbell lifts that help you achieve your goals more optimally? Yes.
But the most important things we care about are the 9 Elements of Safe & Effective Barbell Training which apply to all lifts.
We also care about barbell training technique consistency because consistency in your lift execution ensures:
Your body is adapting to the movement, so you can handle the load safely as you progress.
You can successfully handle the same or heavier loads in competition and to competition standards.
You are at lower risk for injury.
Barbell Training Technique Consistency Matters
The 9 Elements of Safe & Effective Barbell Training apply to the lift execution from the start and end of a single rep irrespective of other reps.
So we need to understand how technique has the potential to change over time to provide us an additional benchmark to judge our performance on other than 9 Elements.
There are two ways we see barbell technique develop inconsistencies over time.
Technique Breakdown
Form Creep
Technique Breakdown:
Technique breakdown is the unintentional change in your technique while moving the load.
This has potential implications on your body’s ability to manage that load due to adaptability and physical preparedness. With technique breakdown, your body is moving into unintentional and under-adapted positions for which it may not be prepared. Therefore, in instances where training load or fatigue is too high (RPE 8.5+), we are at high risk for injury.
When barbell technique breakdown occurs, we start to see one or more of those 9 Elements unmaintained.
Think of it as a domino effect. Even if you can maintain some elements as intended, the more you train through and allow a technique breakdown to persist, the more you’ll see changes in other aspects of your technique.
Over time, this may lead to less optimal movement, less strength development and progress, and increased injury risk.
For example, let’s consider knee cave when squatting.
In all barbell squats, there will be some degree of knee cave or the inward motion of the knees on the ascent of the squat.
Knee cave when squatting occurs at the hip. Hip internal rotation and adduction do not contribute directly to moving the barbell up or down. The muscles responsible for internal and external rotation of the hip function to stabilize the femur in line with the feet, so the hip and thigh musculature are in the most optimal position to extend the hip and knee against gravity.
We consider knee cave when squatting to be suboptimal and a higher risk for injury for the following reasons:
It puts the hip, thigh, and knee musculature in a less effective position to produce force (Barbell Force Transfer Element 3: Muscle Utilization).
It leads to a change in the hip and knee planes under moving load creating potential and unnecessary injury exposure to internal structures of the joint (Barbell Balance Element 3: Joint Neutrality).
It creates additional moments of force at the knee and hip that you must overcome, making the lift harder and requiring more energy to complete (Muscle Utilization & Joint Neutrality).
It’s one thing to understand the concept of barbell technique breakdown, but it’s another to understand why this happens and how to combat it.
Below we will discuss 6 reasons barbell technique breakdowns happen:
Barbell Technique Breakdown Reason # 1: You’re moving too fast!
There is a fine balance between moving too fast and too slow when it comes to barbell training.
On the one hand, moving too slowly can make the lift more challenging and limit how much you can lift or how many reps you can. This is because increased time under tension causes your muscles and cardiovascular system to fatigue more quickly than if you were moving at a regular speed.
On the other hand, moving too quickly can lead you to lose control of the bar, the tension in your spine, balance, or endpoints.
Another concern with moving too fast is your brain does not have enough time to think, feel, process, and respond to what your body is doing in space.
Lastly, moving too fast may indicate you are rushing between reps, not just on the ascent and descent. The time between reps is equally as important as the lift execution because, between reps, we refocus, reset our breath, and reset our body if we need to.
How to fix it?
→ Move with a two-count pace on the ascent and descent of all lifts.
→ Respect the moments between reps and ensure you’re resetting your breath and body before each rep.
→ Review your videos between work sets to make sure you’re not speeding up at any point or rushing between reps.
If the thought of taking videos of yourself in training is too cumbersome or overwhelming, check out our Barbell Athlete’s Guide To Filming Lifts, curated specifically to reduce time, anxiety, and equipment needed to video your lifts.
Barbell Technique Breakdown Reason # 2: The weight is just too heavy!
Our muscles function together to move our body through space. They will never function in isolation. It doesn’t matter if you’re just doing a dumbbell bicep curl; it’s not only the bicep contributing to elbow flexion. Elbow flexion in the dumbbell bicep curl recruits the biceps brachii, brachialis, and brachioradialis. If the load we are using is too heavy for one of those muscles, our form will start to break down.
We see this similarly with deadlift grip strength. The muscles in the hands and forearms are much smaller than the main mover muscles in the deadlift. As a result, deadlift grip strength can lead to form breakdown because when the grip is insecure or starts to fall, our body starts to compensate or react in other areas. One way we see this with the deadlift is that the bar starts to get away from your shins, or your back starts to round while you lift the load.
Similarly, we see this with a knee cave while squatting. If the load is just too heavy for the small hip external rotators to keep the femurs stable in their position, we begin to see excessive knee cave.
While some degree of grip and hip failure can be powered through, at some point, the load is simply too heavy, and you’ll fail the lift.
Our body is only as strong as our weakest link.
How to fix it?
The answer is not single leg exercises, hip external rotation exercises, or squatting with a band around your knees.
The answer is to use your weakest link as your ceiling. Notice at what loads and volumes your weakest link begins to present itself. Be aware that this may not correlate to how strong the rest of you is.
What we mean by this is: you may be able to squat 315 lbs for 5 reps at an RPE 8, but your knees cave significantly. To hit 5 reps without knee cave while squatting, perhaps you find that this is possible at 275 lbs.
Even though your program may use prescriptive RPE and ask you to train at an RPE 8 or 9 today, your form is breaking down because your weakest link is not strong enough.
Lower the load and work at a load that your weakest link can maintain.
Barbell Technique Breakdown Reason # 3: You’re fatigued
The weight on the bar can simply be too heavy because you’re not physically strong enough or prepared for it, but it can also “become too heavy” while you’re within a training session or from day to day because of fatigue.
Training fatigue is the opposite of recovery. The more you recover, the less fatigued you will be, and the less you recover, the more fatigued you will be.
Accumulated fatigue is training fatigue carried over from the previous workout, the previous set, or fatigue at the end of a high rep set. These can all influence your ability to perform the barbell lift and maintain your technique over time.
Also, life stress and recovery play into fatigue. For example, even if your program is perfect, if you didn’t sleep the night before, had a long day at work, and didn’t eat enough, you can experience more fatigue during your training session.
Moral of the story - the more recovered you are, the better your ability to fight against form breakdown. The more fatigued you are (or the less recovered you are) the harder it is for you to perform well and maintain your technique.
How to fix it?
Respect the rest:
Between reps - pause between reps for 1-2 seconds even if it feels easy.
Between sets - rest a little longer if the sets are getting harder and harder.
Between exercises - don’t superset.
Between training sessions - get good sleep, and take a day off every 3rd day.
Eat well.
Adjust training load if it’s too heavy even though it “should be easy.”
Barbell Technique Breakdown Reason # 4: You’re distracted or unfocused.
We’ve all been there!
Your favorite Green Day song comes on, and you instantly want to jam.
You clip the plates on the rack while you’re walking out your squat and don’t regain focus.
Your spotter is hovering over your face during the bench.
Someone brought their toddler to the gym, and they’re crawling around in front of you.
Your ex walks into the gym mid top set of squats.
Whatever it is, it’s a distraction, and it’s taking your focus away from your set and your technique. You can’t control your environment or the people in it, but you can control how you respond.
How to fix it?
In this situation, do your best to stay focused on your own lifting. It’s okay to take a moment to regroup, re-rack, or reset to perform better.
Don’t worry about other people in the gym.
If music distracts you, but you want to tune people out, play instrumental music that you are unfamiliar with but in a genre you enjoy. For example, I listen to instrumental EDM when I train at commercial gyms and when I’m writing articles like this one. It keeps me pumped but focused, and people don’t chat with me because my earbuds are in (when they aren’t falling out 🥴).
Barbell Technique Breakdown Reason # 5: There was a freak accident.
You can dot all your i’s and cross all your t’s, but sometimes freak accidents or random things happen when you’re training for many reasons.
Perhaps it was a lot more humid than usual in the gym, so there was a little condensation on the floor.
Maybe a bolt was loose in the bench or rack.
Maybe the barbell and your shirt material didn’t agree, so the bar slid on your back.
Or maybe the weight felt much lighter than you expected, so you lost your balance at the top of the deadlift.
These are just freak things that we don’t always have control over but influence our position or execution when we’re lifting.
How to fix it?
Sometimes stuff just happens that we can’t be prepared for or usually expect.
The most important thing is to stop the set, re-rack, check in with ourselves after it happens, regroup, and implement measures on our next set to reduce its influence.
Barbell Technique Breakdown Reason # 6: You’re in pain.
We will say it again for the people in the back - you cannot prevent injuries in barbell training (or any sport), so you’ll be injured or in pain at some point.
The amount of pain you’re experiencing may not be enough for you to sit on the bench, and you’ll continue to train. But it has the potential to lead to form breakdown by subconsciously impacting the way you move.
Let’s use knee pain when squatting as an example. Often this leads people to shift away from the painful side or the knee to cave inward to avoid pain.
How to fix it?
In situations where your form breaks down in response to pain, we recommend modifying the intensity and/or the movement so that you can maintain your form without aggravating your symptoms or causing other problems to arise because of form breakdown.
Should I Care About Technique Breakdown?
You may be thinking that “just a little form breakdown is okay,” and you’re not entirely wrong.
The problem is that when we allow form breakdown to repeatedly happen over time, it can become a bigger issue:
Your strength stops progressing despite a well-written program.
You miss lifts in competition even though you “handled” them in training or projected you’d be able to in the meet.
You’re at risk for the development of chronic aches, pains, or injury because your technique is variable and your body is unable to adapt.
You’re at risk for an acute traumatic injury because your body was put into a position under a heavy load that it was unable to support.
Your technique changes slightly over time without realizing it and becomes less optimal. We call this form creep.
Form Creep:
Form Creep is the unintentional, unnoticed change in technical execution over time. This is a gradual change in barbell training technique that occurs over time, not just in a particular set or reps. It generally develops because of a minimal, unaddressed form breakdown that doesn’t cause an acute problem.
Form creep has potential implications on performance and injury risk because you’re no longer optimizing your technique according to the 9 Elements of Safe & Effective Barbell Training.
If we are not optimizing our technique, we are not:
Maximizing our strength and muscular development
Optimizing our goal attainment
Reducing our injury risk
Instilling longevity and sustainability in our barbell training
So we should care about it.
Why is it important to address form breakdown and creep even if there is no apparent acute issue?
Consider the above example of knee cave during the squat. This may first present itself as a form breakdown at heavy loads or under high training fatigue for the last 1-2 reps of each set.
If this continues without being addressed, we may start to see knee cave while squatting across more reps and more sets instead of just the last rep or last set. Soon, this movement pattern will become learned.
In time, this knee cave could start to pop up on lighter weight and even warm-up sets until we start to see it on every set; knee cave while squatting has become the new normal, the newly adopted technique.
Even if it’s consistent, it’s not optimal, and we have evidence that shows the lifter is capable of squatting without their knees caving in.
At max loads or high fatigue, our weakest link is form creep or technique breakdown, which could be the reason for failure or injury.
When technique becomes sub-optimal and less efficient, it can lead to failed reps and stalled progress. If you’re starting to fail reps during training, the relative intensity is too high, fatigue levels will increase, and you’ll ultimately be more susceptible to injury.
Also, when movement changes under max loads or high fatigue, you expose your body to significant stress when your movement is not ideal and different from how you usually train. This is especially the case with technique breakdown- if you warm up with consistent technique and suddenly have a different technique under really heavy loads, your body just isn’t prepared to move heavy weight like that.
Addressing Form Creep and Breakdown
If you’ve been training with form creep or breakdown for an extended period, this won’t be an easy fix, but it is doable and well worth the time and effort to address. This change won’t happen overnight, and it will require consistent focus and practice.
We recommend addressing form creep and breakdown not by isolating the weakest link with an isolation exercise or using an assistance or supplemental lift to train the weakness.
Why not? Because technique breakdown and form creep are neuromuscular motor patterns that need to be retrained. If you address this by training a specific muscle or muscle group or using a different exercise, you are not addressing the problem: the motor pattern.
We recommend using the lift to fix the lift. More on this in a moment.
We ultimately want to limit form creep and breakdown while pushing our technique ceiling higher. This means that we should aim to increase the weight in which we start to see these technique changes. Your technique ceiling is the absolute or relative intensity at which form breakdown exceeds acceptable levels.
So if you can rep out 225 lbs without a knee cave while squatting, but at 235 lbs your knees start to come in, you should work towards squatting 235 lbs without knee cave. When you can squat 235 lbs without knee cave, it pushes your technique ceiling a little higher. When we continue to work on pushing that limit higher, we don’t have to worry as much about injuries or failing.
Fatigue Management plays a major role in addressing form creep and breakdown since they’re both often preceded by high levels of fatigue. We can look at fatigue on a macro & micro scale since both play into technique changes.
If the relative intensity of training is too high, accumulated fatigue is high, and recovery is lacking - you’re more susceptible to technique changes when you're simply just trying to get through the workout without failing.
Technique is more susceptible to breaking down under these circumstances. Therefore, tracking training trends and making program changes in response to high RPEs (rating of perceived exertion) and declines in e1RM (estimated 1 rep max) is essential to managing fatigue, optimizing technique, and improving performance.
We recommend keeping your individual set RPE, average exercise RPE, session RPE, and weekly average RPE between 7.5 and 8.5 RPE regularly for the uninjured, typical trainee (this excludes pregnant, early postpartum, 50+, individuals with any pelvic health condition, and other special populations).
When any of these RPEs begin to exceed 8.5, consistently acute or chronic fatigue has accumulated. This is when we tend to see form breakdown happen more regularly, and the domino effect begins. This is when you need to make a change. The PRS Sustainable Training Builder can help you simply and easily track these trends to recognize when change is necessary.
Conscious Efforts are important in making the motor pattern changes to address technique breakdown and form creep.
We know it’s complicated and challenging to think while you have a heavy load on moving with your body, but that’s all the more reason to actively think and be present in your movement.
You may need various internal and external cues to help you change your movement pattern. So it’s best to work with a qualified coach who can help you think critically about your movement and provide cueing that enables you to make the movement adjustments necessary.
The best way to apply these cues to your movement, stay conscious and reduce overwhelm while training is to lower the load and perceived effort. This may mean you’re working in the RPE 7-8 range for a period of time, but it’s well worth the effort to do so and will push your technique ceiling over time.
If you’d like help with your barbell training technique, please join us in our free Facebook group, The Secret Society of Barbell Mastery, where we provide free form checks and answer your questions about barbell training.
Is Form Breakdown In Barbell Training Technique Ever Okay?
While we’ve just spent an entire e-book’s worth of writing to describe what technique breakdown and form creep are, why they work against us, and the 4 Core Goals of the PRS Sustainable Training Method, we must discuss when technique breakdown is okay.
We get stronger through the process of stress, recovery, and adaptation (SRA). We do need to work hard enough to cause enough stress to spark the SRA process, but not too hard that the RA portion is overthrown by injury or excessive stress that takes too long to recover from, thus interfering with our ability to train again soon.
This means we should train at relative intensities in the 85%+ or 8.5 RPE + range to some degree. Generally speaking, we’ll see some form breakdown on training sets in these ranges. However, the breakdown should not be on more than 1-2 reps for 1-2 sets. And within the PRS Sustainable Training Method, we control for this by assessing the exercise average RPE for each individual exercise on a regular basis. You can do this easily using our Free Sustainable Training Builder, which you can download here.
The most notable place we consciously allow form to break down is in powerlifting or strength lifting competitions. In competitions, it doesn’t matter how pretty you look so long as you meet the competition standards. With the goal to lift the most weight possible and possibly outlift other competitors on the platform, you must allow form to break down but not at the expense of missing the lift or hurting yourself.
You may be wondering: “how will I be prepared to lift the most weight possible with form breakdown if I’m not supposed to allow my form to break down in training?”
The answer is simple: by controlling training fatigue and training 1-2 sets throughout the training week at high enough intensity that you get some form breakdown on 1-2 reps. You’ll be lifting heavy enough and practicing your form breakdown with the least amount of exposure to injury possible.
Circling back to the initial question: Does technique really matter?
Yes, technique does matter, and so does technique consistency. Everything is adaptable, but not everything is optimal. So if your goals include maximizing strength and muscular development, optimizing goal attainment, reducing injury risk, and having longevity in your training, optimizing your technique will help you get there. But that’s just one piece of the puzzle.
Programming and recovery play significant roles in your technique and your progress. So, having a systematic approach to optimizing your technique, program, and recovery is important. That’s why we invite you to download the PRS Sustainable Training builder for free and join our Facebook group. We want you to track your training trends, make adjustments to your program before issues arise, and get consistent form feedback for free from the PRS Clinical Coaching team.