When you think of efficiency, what do you think of first? If you’re like most people, you think of time or money. And while those are certainly important, what about your joint health? How much of that are you willing to spend (or perhaps waste) learning how to do something like exercising? How much are you willing to lose out on because you wouldn’t make an investment when you were relatively rich?
Think about it this way: if you want to learn how to barbell squat or deadlift, you’re moving your bones and joints as well as your joints. Are you doing the moves correctly or are you grinding your gears? If you continuously do exercises incorrectly, won’t you pay a price with your joints?
One of my favorite TV commercials shows a line of men hiking up a hill with backpacks on their backs and all of them are holding their knees as they climb the stairs going up because their knees hurt. Naturally the commercial is for a supplement that might or might not help, but I often wonder if people that hurt their knees when hiking ever consider why they hurt? Wouldn’t learning how to use their glute and hamstrings to push off of each step instead of leaning forward on to the toes and only using their quad muscles be useful? That’s how most people climb stairs and over-using the quads and under-using the hamstrings is a great way to give yourself knee pain. The knee is in-between your quads and hamstrings. Overuse one side without ever learning to use the other side and the part in the middle is going to hurt.
You could spend a little joint health learning how to exercise correctly, which would be a wise investment, or you could waste your joints’ health every time you exercise. Either way, you’re choosing where and how to spend your joint health.