Episode #34: The Importance of Video Analysis For Barbell Training & Powerlifting PLUS Ways to Improve It
Taking videos of your barbell lifts allows you to improve training outcomes, reduce injury risk, improve training autonomy and decrease financial barriers to coaching. The problem is that taking videos can feel cumbersome or make you feel like you’re “that person” in the gym. And you might wonder if it’s really necessary, especially if people used to get by just fine without recording themselves.
We have this tool that allows us to enhance our training, our coaching businesses, and our clinical outcomes, so why not use it? Videos allow us to provide additional feedback, keep additional documentation, compare and measure progress, and helps us fine tune our training.
If we only go based on what it “feels like” we’re NOT optimizing our training.
In this live episode of the PRS Podcast we’ll discuss why athletes, coaches, and clinicians could all benefit from using videos as tools to optimize their own training or their clients’ training, regardless of whether they’re working with a coach or client remotely or in-person. We’ll also talk about how to enhance video analysis by improving the quality of your videos and unique ways to provide feedback remotely for coaches and clinicians who aren’t working with clients in real time or seeing their lifts in the gym.
If you’re enjoying our podcast, please leave us a review on Apple or Spotify.
Join our Facebook Community for free form checks, live Q&As & more: https://www.facebook.com/groups/PRS.Barbell.Mastery
Got questions or guests you'd like to hear on the show? Submit them here: https://forms.gle/7Vu2HmgHoeQY9xM59
Get in touch with the show!
Email: podcast@progressiverehabandstrength.com
Rori IG: @rorimegan_prs
Alyssa IG: @alyssahope_prs
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC : [00:00:25] Welcome to the Progressive Rehab & Strength Podcast.
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:00:27] Where your hosts, Physical Therapist, Strength Coaches, and PRS Clinical Coaches, Dr. Alyssa Haveson.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC : [00:00:33] And Dr. Rori Alter, Join us on our journey of barbell strength training and rehabilitation.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC : [00:00:43] All right. We are here live in the Secret Society of Barbell Mastery. So just do a quick introduction while we wait for friends and family in the secret society to show up. I am Dr. Rori Alter, head clinical coach here at Progressive Rehab & Strength, next to me on either the right or the left of your screen. However, it shows up on Facebook is the lovely Dr. Alyssa Haveson, also a clinical coach here at Progressive Rehab & Strength. If you're new here, we come into our Facebook group, the Free Secret Society of Barbell Mastery, for form checks twice weekly. We answer your questions. We share our content. We engage in discussions with you guys, and periodically we go live. Usually, once a month, we do a Q&A session. Sometimes we come in and record podcast episodes live so you guys can tune in and ask us questions. But this week, so like the next couple of days, we're doing some live bonus training and gearing up towards our free master class. That's coming up next week on the eighth, ninth, and 16th of November. So we wanted to prep you guys for our free masterclass, prime you with some content that might spark your interest, give you some more information and teach you before we teach you in the live masterclass. So we'll put the link for the master class in the description of this live after we finish today. So why are we here today live? What are we talking about? Janice is here live. She's saying, "live."
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC : [00:02:27] What's up, Janice? Janice is a frequent flier at Progressive Rehab & Strength and in the Secret Society of Barbell Mastery. Janice is enrolled in our Barbell Coaching & Movement Optimization course. That's coming up. So guys, keep your eyes and ears peeled for Barbell Coaching & Movement Optimization information. She's also in our clinical coach mentorship program. She was in that for a bit, and now she's back in it also, along with Barbell Coaching & Movement Optimization. So we love Janice. She's a frequent flier. She's a master's competitive lifter at the IPF level, so Janice is awesome. What is up, Janice? Okay, so why are we here today? So why are Alyssa and I jumping on a bonus live with you guys? So we want to talk about the benefits of video analysis in the self-coaching realm, or if you're coaching people in person, doing rehab with people in person, or working with people remotely. So we can use video analysis, all of these training scenarios, and rehab scenarios. So we wanted to talk about why it's important, why we love it, what some hesitations people have around video analysis, and how we can implement it in these four settings. So, Alyssa, why is it that, especially for us as both in-person and remote coaches and clinicians and athletes, we fall into all these categories? Why do we love taking videos of lifts and using them in our analysis, coaching, and clinical practice?
Dr. Alyssa Haveson, PT, PRSCC, CSCS: [00:04:07] Good question, Rori. So videos help us improve client outcomes because we can see what's going on and provide them with feedback. So they also can see what's going on, which helps us reduce their risk of injury, make the program changes based on what we see in those videos, and improve our client autonomy. So our clients can look at their videos, assess them during the session, understand what's going on, and not wait to go in until we get the videos to give them feedback. And it helps us scale our business so that we can provide more feedback to more people and work remotely rather than always having to be there in person or on a remote one-on-one session providing feedback at that moment, which kind of also goes hand in hand with clients being autonomous while they're training.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC : [00:05:08] Yeah. It comes down to, especially in the remote setting, when we're telling someone what to do, but we're not there to see it, and then they're reporting back to us. We run the risk of missing out on what the quality of the movement looks like. And does that match the intention of the program? So I think that's important. But we have some problems with video analysis or taking videos. And many people, not just athletes but coaches and clinicians kind. To face these things, they don't want to impose too much stress on the lifter and don't want to take so much time to look at videos. So some of the problems we face when it comes to the athlete, the coach, or the clinician are that taking video is cumbersome. You know, it adds another layer to training. So we're already crunched for time. We're already feeling, executing, and looking at our program, logging in to an app, and communicating with our coach. Like we're just so connected to our phones all the time, and we are, like, training takes longer in today's day and age. We've always crunched for time outside of training anyway.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC : [00:06:25] So why do we want to add another layer to training that might take a little more time? And also, many people face that, like, I don't want to be that person who's like, like, oh, don't walk in front of my camera or like setting up a full tripod in the gym or asking someone to take a video. You don't want a lot of people don't want to impose on people to take up too much space in the gym and all those types of things. And then there are the clients, athletes, coaches, or clinicians who think, is this necessary? Do I have to do this? And they kind of justify, like, is it necessary by saying, well, people used to get by just fine without taking video, so I can get by just fine without taking video? But we have this tool, and we all have so much access to not only capturing an image but capturing an image and seeing it right away. You know, back when we captured video, we'd have it on a tape, and then we couldn't play it right away. We'd have to, like, go play it somewhere else or whatever, or where we take a picture and then have to get it developed.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC : [00:07:33] But with the rise of smartphones and technological advancements, everyone has a smartphone that takes a video. So and it's easy, it's fast, and it's instantaneous. So if we have this technology and we can figure out a way to do it quickly and easily without it being this like imposition on training, we should use it because it provides additional feedback to us as the lifter, to the coach, to the clinician on the quality of the movement relative to just the quantity or the description that the lifter is giving us. It also provides additional documentation. So in the clinical setting, you know, we can write things down, say what we see, document load volume and intensity. But when we're looking at the quality of the movement, we can have a video, and every couple of weeks, we can compare over time, maybe post-op ACL, we can look at the quality of knee cave over time if we've been addressing it right. And as I said, it allows comparison and measuring progress over time. So as an athlete, we might say, well, that 275 felt like crap today.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC : [00:08:55] But then when we look at it relative to 275, five months ago, it looks like the quality and execution of the movement, then it might have felt hard to us, but when we look at it on video, it's so much faster than it was five or six months ago. So we can compare our progress over time. And it allows us as athletes and coaches and clinicians within the training or treatment session to really fine-tune our training because we get visual feedback, especially as athletes or as a clinician or coach. With the video, you can show it to the lifter or the client and provide visual feedback to the lifter of what the movement looks like relative to what they felt when they did the movement. So it's another element of feedback that allows for fine-tuning. Alyssa, when we were outlining our chat today, you said if we only go based on what it feels like, we're not optimizing our training. And I think that's what it comes down to.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC, SSC : [00:10:12] This is funny. My mom, when Jade was like really little, he is two now. We had all these things like we had not just swaddle blankets, but these swaddle-like sacks that you could wrap around that made swaddling easy. And we had a sound machine and a more high-tech no sucker like Boogie sucker. And we had all these things that my parents didn't have, and they're always like, Well, we didn't have any of that. And you turned out fine, you know. But, I like to think of it as Darwinism or, like, evolution, you know, like survival of the fittest. Like, we evolve, and like, everything that we come up with and the advancements that we make in technology, like, they help us just be better, right? So adding this small layer of video to our training is helping us optimize it more than we could. Ten years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. So why not, Right?