Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Why reviewing your exercise technique can make you more progress!
Transcript
- Cameron Cummings: Welcome to today's podcast, the Cameron's Conversation podcast. And today, it's all about why I get my clients to send me technique videos. So I think this is one that I want to touch on for a couple of different reasons. I wasn't sure whether to call this, maybe I should change the title of it, is to like how to be comfortable filming in the gym or why it's worthwhile filming in the gym. If you are in a gym, if you train at home or you have a little garage gym, ideal, you don't even have to worry about that. The only thing you have to worry about is rogue pets and family members, which to be fair might be a legitimate worry. But I think that when it comes to technique, one of the things that happens a lot is that people kind of think that's good enough. And the problem with that is, is that actually there's a lot more to getting the most out of your technique than just copying and pasting the bog standard technique. So when I did my PT course, right, The way that you're taught is that everyone should squat this way, this is what you do, this is the way you say it. say chest up, knees out, those kind of things. And actually, if you go into a gym or you've been to a personal trainer who's maybe not that experienced, and this isn't a criticism by the way, right? Let's contextualize. I've been a coach since I was 19 and I've coached for, what, 12 years. I'm 31 now, god, that was bad math. I've been a coach for 12 years, right? So I have a hell of a lot of context. I've also made lots and lots of mistakes and I've also spent a ridiculous amount on education. spent outside of my degrees, about 46, 47,000, I think I was calculating the other day on education, right? So I have a bit of an advantage in that I worked really, really hard to become a very busy PT. So I have done about, I don't know, think by the time I finished in-person personal training, think I'd racked up. just over 15 or 16,000 sessions. I can't quite remember how many it was. It was one or the other, but it was over 15. And that's a lot of hours on the gym floor, right? So I have a lot of experience. And I also then spent a lot of my money initially that I had even when I didn't have a lot when I was new PT on education. And then even more so as I got busier. That then has allowed me to learn lots of things. So to be clear, I'm not criticizing because if you've been before and you had an enthusiastic PT that cared about you, they still would have taught you lots about your technique. So it's not all bad at all. I think that's something I want to really quickly clarify because I think sometimes we can almost see it as a negative, it's not. But there's a little bit more to it than that. And actually shifting around position-wise, making sure that we are getting the very most out of every single movement. that we are tweaking things to your individual anatomy, right? So the example I always use is I have a client who's six foot six, and I have a client who's probably four foot nine, something like that. And the way that they squat, unsurprisingly, is different. Not only because one's male and female, and that often means different hip structure and all these kind of things, but also the height's a little bit different. And what might be comfortable for one client might be a bloody nightmare for the other. And yet that's still a squat. So this is where I think it can be really important to understand that if you go into a gym with a friend, right, sometimes your friend might look like they squat or move more naturally through movement. Now could be a skill thing, right? It could just be that if you've only been to the gym twice and they've been 200 times while shock horror that they're better at it than you. But there's also an element of individual and sort of, ⁓ yeah, individual skill, but also anatomy that can lead into it. I am not a great lover of barbell back squatting, so for those of you who are quite afraid with the gym, then you'll know what that is. If you don't, it's where you have a bar on your back, your upper back, and you go into your squats. What you traditionally think of if you see a picture of someone doing a squat, a lot of the time that's what it is. If they don't have a sort of goblet squat set up with a dumbbell, it's usually a bar in their back. Now, I think one of the things that we want to talk about a little here is the idea that everyone squats a little bit differently. If I just give you a copy and paste, do this, do this, do this, actually, that's gonna probably get you to an okay standard for most exercises most of the time, right? It's going to be enough to get going. It's enough to get started. So that's the positive. But there's this element of, like I was working with one of my clients this week and we were playing about, we've checked in twice because he his leg press twice in a week. and we played about with a couple of different positions and I asked him for little bit feedback and I got him to film a little bit and we've tweaked it now and he's now finding that he's hitting his quads a lot more, he's finding it much comfier on his hips as well and he feels like the position we've got, he's now actually feeling the muscles he's looking to work more. So one of his goals is he wants to be a bit stronger through his quads. So we've worked on that specifically. where have other clients who might have a slightly different focus and we might approach that differently, or indeed, they just have a different body shape, different limb lengths, all these things, so we can manipulate that too. Now that might sound all a bit heavy going and you might be thinking, that sounds a bit much, but of course, this is where having a coach, right? You can't expect yourself just to learn all that, that's too much. For most people, if they've got safe and sensible technique, that is going to be enough if you're on your own. But if you have a coach, this is the big benefit and this is why I'm such an advocate of filming in the gym because I know sometimes people think, you know, ⁓ God, people are filming in the gym. The reality is, is every gym I go into, people are filming themselves. I think you want to be respectful and boundary about it. If the gym's bloody rammed and you're catching loads of people very clearly in the background, yeah, I'm not a massive fan of it. And I do have a bit of a thing. If I'm filming, I'm quite conscious that I will, even for me, and I use social media a lot as you can imagine being an online coach. that I try to make sure that video is just of me if I'm putting it online. If there's other people that are clearly in the background, I won't upload it, right? I'll just film another video or not use it full stop. But I think when it comes to technique videos, it's really, important. And a really quick way of setting up that I like is I just get a small dumbbell, maybe like a five kilo dumbbell, and I prop my phone up at a 45 degree angle to where I am, and that works really, really well. Also, bit of a life hack. when you go into your iPhone, you can put it to .5 rather than one and it widens the frame. So it means if you're relatively close to it, although sometimes it can look a little bit weird in terms of your proportions, it can be quite useful because it just means that it catches all of you. So that can work really, really well too, because there's nothing worse than when you catch just the right-hand side of your sock or something like that, which I've done multiple times. So I think it can be really useful and I ask my clients to do this and pop over to me. Now of course, Some clients do it more than others, like absolutely that's the case. I have some clients who find it a bit easier than others, sometimes because they train at home or a quieter gym. Some clients train in really busy gyms at 6 p.m. It's just a bit harder to do. But when they can, when they get the chance to, I find it super useful because very, very rarely will there be nothing to tweak. If someone gives me three or four exercises, I would say that about 90 to 95 % of the time there's gonna be small tweaks to make, especially in the first few months of coaching, right? As time goes on, that will lessen. Even then, for a little bit of context, I coach a pretty broad spectrum of people, right? But mostly people that have struggled with a weight loss at times have maybe lost before and regained, but that's pretty broad, right? Okay, that's quite a broad statement, because that doesn't really contextualize training. But within that, I have a few fitness instructors I train, so two fitness instructors, three fitness instructors, and a handful of personal trainers as well. So I actually coach a few people who... already train quite a lot and are very familiar with training, unsurprisingly, being PT's, and yet even then, there's almost always little things that we're tweaking with their technique. I actually was reviewing one of my clients' PT's technique earlier and just pointing out some small things. Now, if you were to look at their technique, it's good. There's nothing that's wrong with it, right? There's just little adaptions and adjustments we can make. So, the kind of point of this is that, first off, I think it is incredibly valuable if you do have a coach that's me with someone else, I think it's really, really important that you do utilise that. I think you can get a lot of benefit out of it and actually I think people underrate how valuable technique reviews can be and I think a lot of the time people are a bit nervous about doing them but actually, I think sometimes people are like, ⁓ but you know I look sweaty or whatever in the gym. I'm like, have you seen me post on Instagram? Have you seen the faces I put? Like it's not a competition but I'm winning. But I think this is one of these things that you can easily get caught up your own head and like. No one cares, you're training. If I didn't see you pulling faces when you're training, my first bit of feedback is gonna be you're not trying hard enough, right? It's too easy. So I think that's really important. And also, the context of if you think, well, I don't have a coach, so how is this relevant? It's like, well, actually it's still relevant because watching yourself back, even if you don't know a lot about training and technique, you'll probably pick up on things that you. I think, ⁓ actually, I'm maybe leaning really quite forward in that. That's farther than I thought. Or actually, I think I'm doing those reps quite slowly, but I'm kinda rushing them. And you can see I'm kinda like I'm squatting and I'm bouncing out the bottom a lot and my back's coming forward. You start to pick up on even little things. Even someone who doesn't know much about exercise that much. That's a bit weird the way he's saying that, but anyway. They might be able to look at another video and say, ⁓ well, that person's doing that, so actually I could probably tweak it a little bit more in line with that. And that might not be perfect, does it say? there's more in-depth things that I'd go into with a one-to-one client and say, right, okay, this is like based on your height and the way that you move, this is probably the best position for you. Let's play about with this, let's try this. Does that feel comfier? Does that feel better in those muscle groups? Then that's great. But even at an individual level, it can still be really bloody useful. And I think I can probably speak for pretty much any online coach, I think, hopefully, at least in this one particular point that technique videos are something I'd love to get more of from clients. And that's obviously me literally asking for even more work, right? So if I'm not busy enough. But I'm such a fan of it because I think it can be so helpful. And that two, three, four minutes it might take to kind of do a little bit of filming, send it over is so helpful. And as a coach, the four or five minutes I take to kind of review things or however long it takes depending on my videos is so helpful. And it's also really helpful because it puts you more and more into the driving seat of your own training. I want my clients to understand a little bit more about the why and what they need to do and why we're kind of changing things or tweaking things or why we might do it slightly different from someone else, why our feet might be slightly wider for that person but someone else might do it narrower and one's not better or worse, it's just better for that person. So I wanted to touch on that as well as this idea of like. actually technique reviews and individualizing things is very, important. That I think that as a bloody good start point that we can have just used this copy and paste kind of approach for most people. That's where they start. That's how I learned too. I saw friends doing it. I did the same as them. But there is another level to it. And the way I describe it is like this. It's like when someone says, I'm gonna lose weight. How are you gonna do it? I'm gonna eat healthy. Well, if they work hard at eating healthy, they have some more fruit, some more veg, bit more protein. and they're generally a little bit more sensible snacks, it probably isn't going to hurt, right? They're going to move in the right direction. That same thing applies to training, right? If you have a little look at other technique and pick it up, you're definitely gonna head at least a bit in the right direction. However, there's a level above that where you think, actually, I'm gonna plan out my meals, I'm gonna track my calories, I'm gonna be more organized, I'm gonna get a really good amount of protein, and I'm getting a really good amount of fruit and veg in. there is a level above that and that level above that yields much greater results. There's a reason that so many of my clients will train a lot more pain free and will be a lot more comfortable and will make a lot better progress in terms of body composition and in the gym. And it's not magic, it's just that they have a higher level or a better level of structure to someone else. And they probably have accountability and they've got a coach pushing them, yeah, that's bits of it too, but actually they're probably getting more from their time, they are more. effective with the training in the same way that if you're tracking calories, et cetera, rather than just saying, I'm gonna eat healthy, that's more effective. So you're both heading in the same direction, but you're gonna make better progress for it. And it's going to feel like you make disproportionately better progress. So I just wanted to touch on that. And the final point is about this whole thing about like, maybe being quite self-conscious about filming yourself in the gym. I get it. I think that's normal. I would always say to clients, like if it's rammed busy, like don't worry about it. But at the same time, like, No one cares as much as you do. Also set yourself the challenge. In most gyms, you see a lot of people filming themselves. Now, I went into the gym the other day, which is the second closest one to me, and I like going there, because although it's five minutes more in the car, it's just better. I go to that one, and when I was there, I walked in, and probably within the first 15 minutes, I saw six people, I think, filming their sets, right? And they were doing it in a good way. It wasn't like they had a massive set up in the middle of the gym and you had to dodge a camera. It's just that they were in a squat rack in the corner or they were on a bench in the corner and they just angled their phone from the floor and they're just checking over their technique. So pretty, you know, not bothersome, right? Because I know it can be a bit, you know, people filming. But actually, like, it's fine. And it's not such a big deal. And a lot of people are just using it to review their technique or because they have coaches and things like that as well. So. You're definitely not the odd one out if you're doing it now. It is more common than not. And I know that some people kind of think, ⁓ I shouldn't be able to film in a gym and things like that. I get where that comes from completely because I've been in commercial gyms that really busy and I understand that people are self-conscious, but I think it's about, again, like anything in life, the way you do it matters. Think if I had my tripod on the top setting and placed it in the middle of the gym floor landscape to catch the whole gym. probably not very fair, but if I go into the corner of the gym where there's no one training and it's relatively quiet anyway, it has no impact on them. So that is my particular perspective on it. And I know some people will disagree with that, and that's okay. That's absolutely fine. But I think it's bloody useful. So if you are interested in wantable coaching, want to know a little bit more, the link is gonna be in the show notes as always. If you would like to hear a little more about a specific topic. then you can always pop me a message on Instagram as well. Feel free to do that. I have always got a little list going of new podcast topics. I like these little mini episodes so I can cover lots of different topics. I've got a list of seven that I'm going through for this week. But if there is anything you'd like me to cover, just let me know and I will get that done over the next couple of weeks for you and it'll no doubt be released relatively soon. And it can be your very own inspired podcast. There you go. Anyway, have a great day and speak soon.