Stop worrying about “moving wrong”.

Once upon a time both my knees hurt so much that I had to limp home from work at the end of each day.

Now I never think about them.

I messed them up by squatting.

Can you guess what exercises I used to fix them?

Squatting.

See, the problem wasn’t the exercise. It was my training volume, the relative loading, the frequency of exposure, my recovery and my own internal narratives about why I had pain.

I spent a long time learning that - for about a year all I did was waste time trying to get my technique “just right”. I really believed that if I could just get my toes aligned the right way, or hold the arch in my foot slightly differently or make sure my weight stayed planted on a particular part of my foot the pain would just go away…

But none of that made a difference.

It didn't matter which muscles I activated, how well I braced my core or which direction I pointed my toes.

What I actually needed was about 2 more hours sleep each night, and a method of programming that let me adjust intensity up and down to appropriate levels for a given day, rather than the “GO HARD OR GO HOME” culture I was indoctrinated into at the time.

I really believed if I wasn’t lifting as heavy as possible, I was better off not training.

But if you can move, you recover faster by moving. If you can squat 2kg pain-free, but 200kg hurts, it’s better to squat 2kg than 0kg.Then 4kg. Then 8...and off you go again.

If you want to be able to move without pain, you start by finding a way you can currently move that doesn’t make it worse, then you move a lot.

Don’t obsess over getting it exactly right - the more you do that the more you’ll be looking for problems, and the more of them you’ll find.

More or less any non-insane technique will be OK if you’re careful about your loading - your body will adapt to it over time, get stronger in whatever “wrong” positions you're in and you’ll be fine.

Don’t worry about moving wrong - worry about making time in your day to move regularly, and doing it with appropriate intensity.