There’s a significant difference between moving weight from point A to point B and using technique that actually triggers hypertrophy. If you want to stop spinning your wheels and start seeing consistent gains, you need to understand what separates good technique from bad.

Here’s how to audit your lifts for optimal muscle growth and strength development.

7 Signs Your Technique is Primed for Muscle Growth

When the goal is hypertrophy, your technique shouldn’t just look “clean”—it needs to create the right internal environment for the target muscle. Here are the seven indicators:

1. Target Muscle Tension

Is the muscle you’re trying to grow actually doing the work? If you’re doing bicep curls but your forearms feel like they’re about to explode while your biceps feel nothing, your technique is failing you.

The Fix: Adjust your biomechanics. For example, in chest flies, slightly bending the elbows can shift the tension from the biceps back to the pecs.

2. The Target Muscle “Burn”

That acidic, burning sensation at the end of a set is the accumulation of metabolic byproducts. If you’re doing lunges for glutes but only your quads are burning, you’re missing the mark. While not mandatory, having that burn in the target muscle is a high-probability indicator of effective stimulus.

3. The Pump

A localized pump—where the muscle feels tight and full—is a classic sign of effective technique. If your leg press doesn’t result in a quad pump, try lowering your feet on the platform or slowing down the eccentric (lowering) phase to force the quads to work harder.

4. Muscle Disruption (The “Newborn Deer” Test)

Good technique should leave the muscle functionally challenged for a short period. This manifests in three ways:

• Fatigue: You shouldn’t be able to hit a PR on a second exercise if you just thoroughly trained that muscle with the first one.
• Perturbation: If you finish a leg workout and walk like a “newborn deer,” your technique was likely spot on.
• Soreness: While not the only indicator, delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) in the target area suggests your technique was functional.

5. Joint and Connective Tissue Health

Pain is a data point. If your knees hurt during squats, don’t just quit squatting. First, examine your technique. Often, a small adjustment—like pressing through the midfoot rather than the toes—can instantly eliminate joint pain.

6. Low Systemic Fatigue

Good technique is efficient. You want high local muscle fatigue with low systemic (total body) exhaustion. If a set of upright rows leaves you completely drained because you were heaving and using your whole body, your technique needs work. Strict movement isolates the muscle without draining your central nervous system.

This is especially important for optimizing your training intensity—you want the fatigue to accumulate in the target muscle, not across your entire system.

7. The Target Muscle is the Limiting Factor

In a perfect set, the reason you stop is that the target muscle can no longer produce force. If your front delts fail during a tricep extension before your triceps do, you need a technical fix to shift that load back to the right place.

SetsApart helps you track this by logging which muscle groups are getting trained with each hard set. If you notice your shoulders accumulating more hard sets than your triceps on “tricep day,” that’s a clear signal to reassess your technique.

5 Rules for Strength-Focused Technique

If your goal is moving the heaviest weight possible (powerlifting style), the rules shift slightly:

1. Physical Stability

If you’re wobbly, your body will limit force production to prevent injury. A rock-solid, rooted setup is essential for lifting heavy.

2. Load Efficiency

Once basics are ingrained, the technique that allows you to lift the most weight is usually optimal for strength. This is where tracking your progressive overload becomes essential—you need data to know if a technique change actually improved your performance.

3. Joint Preservation

You can’t lift heavy if you’re injured. Use the technique that feels easiest on your joints under heavy loads.

4. Avoid Precarious Positions

Avoid dive-bombing lifts or excessively rounding your back under limit loads. These increase the probability of acute trauma.

5. Fix Obvious Mechanical Flaws

If widening your grip on the bench instantly lets you lift more weight, your previous technique was objectively worse for strength.

How to Audit Your Own Training

Stop focusing solely on the weight on the bar. Ask yourself after every set: “Where did I feel that?” and “What muscle gave out first?” If the answer isn’t the muscle you’re trying to grow, lower the weight and fix your technique.

SetsApart makes this audit easier by tracking hard sets per muscle group. Over time, you can spot patterns: are your intended target muscles accumulating the training stress, or is it being distributed elsewhere?

The difference between years of spinning your wheels and years of consistent progress often comes down to this simple awareness.

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Source

This article was inspired by and summarizes key insights from the following video. Check out the video for more detail and subscribe to the channel—it’s a great resource for evidence-based training.

Watch the full video: Determining Good Technique vs Bad Technique | Lecture #13