When you are trying develop a motor pattern having a clear idea on what you should be doing with your body in space is imperative for technique development. Knowing what “right” feels like requires a “feeling”. This Feeling is known as proprioceptive awareness.
Usually before the rep because you can administer a “check list” in your head. When you decide to execute the lift, your attention is diminished because the weight you are lifting may exceed a threshold and because you must be fully committed to the lift thinking more will only inhibit performance.
If you were to choose to focus on specific cues to improve form follow this simple rule, the more thinking the less the weight needs to be. We want to challenge this threshold and a great way to do it is by doing paused variations of the lifts.
Usually within a lift you only have one real opportunity to go through a mental checklist. And that’s before you start the lift. When you pause in a specific part of the range of motion you are giving yourself a chance to bring cognitive awareness to a point you would not have otherwise thought of. Here you can perform a micro check list of one – two things.
Examples:
At the bottom of pause bench press – Feet tight, chest up
At the bottom of the squat – knees out
2” off the floor for deadlift – Straight arms, chest up
At the Bottom of a jerk dip - Mid foot, bar on throat
At at the power position in a snatch - over the bar, lats tight
Pause in the catch of the clean - Balance
Practical Application
If you are struggling to improve your form on a lift, try a paused variation 50-60%. Pause for 1 Mississippi count. Start with 4-6 sets of 2-3 reps. The extra duration pauses have greater time under tension so keep the sets short. Be careful with expectations because depending on training age they may not immediately translate to improved form on your higher weight sets. Pausing promoting us to be slow down and as we all should know, in order to develop maximum strength, we must develop maximum speed. It is recommended to periodize this approach.