Why do biomechanics even matter?

I'm going to give you two answers to this question: 

1. The short answer
2. The long answer

The Short Answer

• Have you ever felt the wrong muscle during an exercise? 
• Do you struggle to grow some muscles but not others?
• Have you ever experienced joint discomfort during an exercise?
• Have you ever felt unable to push an exercise hard for fear of injury or excessive risk? 
• Do you struggle to coach clients as a trainer or physical therapist?

Understanding biomechanics solves all of these problems. 

The Long Answer

Before we dive deeper, let's highlight an important irony: the very reason we perform multiple exercises—or even exercise at all—is rooted in biomechanics.

Every time you step into the gym, you're applying biomechanics, often without realizing its importance.

Without foundational knowledge of anatomy and physics, exercise science—and conversations like this—wouldn't exist.

Imagine explaining to someone 500 years ago that people would pay to repeatedly lift heavy objects in a building, then leave.

The reason you know a biceps curl differs from a triceps extension is because others have already done the biomechanical groundwork for you.

So, questioning the importance of biomechanics often comes from a place of privilege—and I mean that objectively. It's the privilege of having gyms and specialized equipment precisely engineered around our anatomy.

When you can comfortably sit down, grab a handle, and effortlessly target specific muscles, it's easy to overlook the significance of biomechanics. We often take for granted the generations of effort that made this possible.

Think about it: when you imagine chest exercises, what immediately comes to mind? Bench presses, chest flyes, and similar movements, right?

Yet, these associations exist only because history and culture established them for you.

Acknowledging this privilege helps move us from surface-level assumptions toward a deeper, genuine understanding of biomechanics.

I'll Be More Specifc

Imagine you're cooking a meal—wouldn't you want to understand your ingredients?

Trying to exercise without knowing biomechanics is like cooking without knowing the difference between salt and pepper. And no, you don't need a PhD to know a pull-down targets your back muscles; but recognizing this means you're already applying biomechanics—whether you realize it or not.

The difference is that sometimes you're training with confidence, and other times you're completely guessing.

So, think of every exercise as a meal, and each movement as a combination of biomechanical ingredients.

Here are the key ingredients for any exercise:

• Force - a push or pull that contacts you at a specific location.
• Joint motion - movement that relies on rotation of bones pivoting around other bones.
• Torque - the turning force that weights in the gym create when applied to our joints.
• Muscle contraction - our body's internal, automatic response to load, which creates or prevents motion.

And here's the implication:

• Every rep you perform is ultimatley a combination of the above ingredients.
• Every set is a collection of individual reps.
• All your sets are what create "a workout".
• Your workouts determine the quantity and quality of your progress.

So here's the deal:

If you're already satisfied with your progress in the gym, you might wonder how diving deeper into biomechanics could help you.

Let me be clear: it's possible that it wouldn't help you at all. But I think there's good reason to believe you might not realize what you're missing. I certainly didn't.

And if you're struggling to make progress, there's no better way to break through plateaus than by improving the quality of every single rep—and the best way to do that is to develop your understanding of biomechanics (anatomy + physics).

If you're convinced biomechanics matters and you're ready to level up, check out my lifetime mentorship program here. It costs money, but members consistently tell me it's worth every penny.

If you'd rather not spend money right now, I've also created a free 30-day email course on biomechanics. You'll receive 30 free lessons delivered straight to your inbox over the next 30 days. Click here to sign up for that.

-Ben