Three reasons why you should be videoing your sets

Since at least 2015, I have taken video of a decent chunk of my training. And no, it was not to try and become Instagram famous.

In this article I'm going to outline the three main reasons why you should be video recording your sets to maximise your progress.

Technique

If you're not working with a coach, you have no way of getting feedback on your technique other than just gauging how you subjectively perceive yourself to be moving. The inaccuracy of this is pretty evident based on how many people are under the illusion that they're squatting all the way down.

I learned the majority of my lifting technique by simply recording myself and comparing it with good resources on YouTube. As did many of the coaches who seem to cling desperately to the idea that only an in-person coach can teach people efficient technique.

Some people will say you can just look in a mirror. Three problems with this:

1. If the mirror is side-on, will develop a habit of looking to the side which will probably lead to some inefficient lifting technique

   
   

2. If you are looking at a mirror in front of you, you are missing out on the side-on angle

   
   

3. If you are using a mirror at any angle, you will become reliant on it and unable to lift properly when you inevitably go to gym that doesn't have one

Effort

I recommend everyone use RPE/RIR to assign some kind of metric to how hard they are working. One of the biggest criticisms I hear of this is that too many people rate their sets inaccurately.

Well, using video is a fantastic way of more objectively comparing your rating of difficulty to how fast the rep actually moved.

I can't count how many times I felt like I only had one or two reps in the tank, only to be quickly sobered by my video showing me that the bar was flying up. On days when we feel under motivated, our minds can play tricks on us if we don't have some objective feedback at hand like video.

Motivation

Most of us have a tendency to underestimate just how much progress we have made. And while I track all of mine and my clients' training numbers, I find that seeing a video of an old lift compared to a new one is actually significantly more motivating.

I love looking at a video from 2017 of me struggling to squat 160, and then comparing it to me hitting 200kg a few years later.

If you're new to training in particular, you should absolutely take advantage of recording the weakest sets you will ever do, so that you have a visual record to remind yourself of how far you've come when the gains slow down.