361. How important is exercise form for results?

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Welcome to Pilates Elephants. How important is it to have good technique in

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order to achieve the full benefits of an exercise?

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Well, that was the subject of a research study published in the International

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Journal of Exercise Science in March 2025.

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And I'm going to walk you through what they studied and what they found.

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So this study, first of all,

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was looking at muscle growth. So when they talked about effectiveness,

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what they mean is how effective were the exercises for growing muscle?

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So they weren't evaluating strength, they weren't evaluating range of motion,

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they weren't evaluating other factors like functional ability, etc.

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But this study was measuring muscle growth.

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All right, so what they did was they had two groups of people between the age of 18 and 40.

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There were women and men, and they were all healthy.

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And it was within subject design. So what that means is they studied,

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they did different interventions on the left arm versus the right arm within the same person.

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And this is a very clever design because it eliminates differences that might

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be due to different genetics or different nutrition or different recovery.

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So when you have the left and right arm or left and right leg of a subject in

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the same study doing different protocols,

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any differences between the results of those arms can't be due to genetics or

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nutrition or recovery because the same person owns both arms.

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And plus this gives essentially double the number of, the double the statistical

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power because we have 60 arms in 30 people.

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Whereas if you just studied between people and one person did one protocol and

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the other person did the other protocol, you'd only have 30 subjects.

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So it's a very clever design for testing things like this study tested,

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where we're looking at two different exercise interventions and trying to determine

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if there's a difference in the effect of the exercise interventions.

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And so what this study did was they got these people to do two exercises.

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On each arm. So they did biceps curls and they did triceps pushdowns.

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And a triceps pushdown is a cable machine

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exercise where essentially it's a standing exercise and you start with your

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elbow by your side and your hand is holding a cable like the handle on the end

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of the cable and on the other end of the cable are some weight plates and you

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keep your upper arm still and you just extend your elbow.

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So it's a triceps extension with the upper arm staying tight to the body, to the upper body.

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And biceps curls is the exact reverse of that.

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You start with the arm by the side of the body, the upper arm remains vertical,

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and then the lower arm, the forearm, flexes up towards the shoulder.

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So there were two conditions. And so one arm did one condition and one arm did

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the other condition, and the conditions were called strict and cheat.

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And so one arm, the researchers instructed the participants to use strict form.

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So they gave them very specific instructions to stand with hips,

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with legs, feet hip distance apart, with spine neutral, with the upper arm.

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Vertical, so zero degrees of flexion, zero degrees of abduction for both the

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biceps curl and the triceps extension.

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And they were instructed that the elbow joint was the only joint that should

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move during the movement.

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They were instructed to do a one second concentric.

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So in the biceps curl, the lifting phase is the concentric.

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And in the triceps push down, the pushing down phase is the concentric,

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so they're instructed to take one second to complete the concentric phase,

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and then two seconds to complete the eccentric phase, which is just the reverse.

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So in the biceps curl, the eccentric phase is the lowering phase,

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and in the triceps pushdown, the eccentric phase is the raising phase.

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Whereas in the cheat condition, they were instructed to use,

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external momentum, so to fling their hips forward and lean their torso back

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in order to lift the biceps curl, and to lean their torso forwards and flare

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their elbows out in order to do the triceps pushdown.

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So to use, quote, bad, end quote, form.

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Using external resistance and their body weight to complete the repetitions

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as explosively as possible.

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And they started out by measuring their 10 rep max, so the weight that they

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could do 10 repetitions but not 11, with both the strict form and the cheat form.

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So what happened was the cheat arm ended up having a much heavier weight because

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you can lift a much heavier biceps curl weight when you cheat and shift your

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hips forward and torso back and use momentum and swing the weight up,

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compared to when you stay perfectly still in your spine and your hips and your

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upper arm and you just flex the elbow, you can't biceps curl as heavy of a weight.

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And the same holds true for triceps pushdown.

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When you lean forwards and flare your elbows, you can actually push down a greater weight.

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And so the researchers tested how much the participants could do 10 reps of

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in both the strict condition and the cheat condition and so they gave them the

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exact weight they could do 10 reps of or 8 to 12 actually was the number that they worked on.

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Based on whether that arm was doing strict or cheat.

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So the cheat arms always ended up having heavier loads than the strict arms,

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but both arms got to failure, so where they couldn't complete another concentric

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repetition within the range of 8 to 12 reps.

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So the cheat arms were getting to 8 to 12 reps with a heavier weight because

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they were swinging and using momentum and body weight, whereas the strict arms

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got to the same level of exertion, momentary concentric failure,

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within the same rep range, 8 to 12 reps, but just using a lighter weight and

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zero momentum and using strict form.

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And they did this workout. They did four sets of each exercise twice per week

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on non-concentric days for eight weeks.

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And at the end of the study, 25 people completed the study out of the 30,

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and they measured muscle thickness at, I think,

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four sites in each muscle, so in the biceps and triceps, by ultrasound.

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And they did a bunch of statistical analysis, like a multivariate analysis and

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a univariate analysis, to see whether there were any differences in the muscle

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thickness between the two groups.

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And what they found was there were no significant differences.

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And they did multiple different statistical tests, and all of the tests showed

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that there was no statistical difference between the groups,

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and even there was hardly any numerical difference between the groups.

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So when you look at the graphs of the muscle growth, both groups grew their

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biceps and their triceps during the eight weeks, but the amount of growth was

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almost identical, and in three out of the four sites,

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there was a very slight greater growth or trend to greater growth in the cheat condition.

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Now, that was not statistically significant. So, essentially,

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for all intents and purposes, both groups achieved identical muscle growth.

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So, why could this be? Why could wildly cheating and flinging a dumbbell up

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into a biceps curl, using momentum from your hips and your spine, why could that.

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Produce the same amount of growth or as a strict movement?

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Well, the answer is because when they did, when the participants used the cheat,

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they could actually lift more weight because they were using their hips and

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their spine as well as their biceps.

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So the researcher just gave them more weight. So they actually used a heavier weight.

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And so even though the biceps was producing only part of the force and some

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of the force to lift the dumbbell came from the hips and the spine,

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it was a greater weight that they were lifting.

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So even though the biceps was only lifting, let's say, you know,

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60% of it, well, they were lifting a 40% heavier weight or whatever.

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I don't know what the exact difference was, but they were lifting a substantially heavier weight.

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So 60% was still enough to fatigue the biceps to momentary concentric failure

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within this stated rep range.

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So, even though the other muscles in the hips and spine contributed,

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the biceps itself also reached momentary failure. So.

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But the takeaway from this is not that cheating is better or strict form is

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better for muscle growth. They're both identical.

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But that cheating works just as well as long as you increase the load so that

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you reach the same fatigue endpoint, the same intensity of endpoint. point.

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So, you know, what is the practical takeaway of this for Pilates?

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Does this mean that we should abandon all technique and, you know,

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simply fling, you know, use momentum to fling through movements?

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No, of course not. Because there are other goals for movement,

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you know, growing muscle is one very important goal for movement.

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And there are other goals And control, flexibility,

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just the very act of becoming more skillful at the movement is inherently satisfying

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and motivating to clients.

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So absolutely, I think we should encourage people to do,

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I'm going to use the word correct technique and being correct being defined as correct.

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The Pilates move, you know, if you're teaching, for example,

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Contrology, you know, follow the instructions by Joseph Pilates, for example.

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I think it is important in Pilates, and that is one of the key defining features of Pilates,

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is that it requires great concentration to move and to try to achieve correct form.

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And from that great concentration follows where we're able to get into a flow state.

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And that gives rise to many of the great benefits of Pilates around mental well-being

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and reducing anxiety and depression and stuff and why we all feel so happy after doing Pilates.

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And so I think absolutely technique is important for those reasons,

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but it's not important, it turns out, for building muscle.

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So if your goal is

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purely to build strength in say a lunge or a push-up or something if somebody's

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elbows are flaring out or their knee is flaring out or whatever it might be

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that as long as they have enough load that they do reach a high enough level of intensity i.e.

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Close proximity to momentary concentric failure where they can't complete another

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concentric rep so getting within two or three reps of that point.

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As long as they achieve that, then they are going to get.

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Essentially identical benefits in terms of muscle growth.

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And I would argue, we don't have direct evidence for this, but I would argue

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pretty strongly based on my understanding of biomechanics and strength science, that they are very,

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very likely to get identical or

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possibly even greater benefits in terms of strength building by cheating.

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So dear listener, I hope you found that at least thought-provoking,

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I'm going to link to the study in the show notes.

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The name of the study is Do Cheaters Prosper?

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Effects of Externally Supplied Momentum During Resistance Training on Measures

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of Upper Body Muscle Hypertrophy by Francesca Augustin et al.

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And it was published in the International Journal of Exercise Science in March 2025.

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So with that, dear listener, much love, and I will see you in the next one.