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Old 06-20-2009, 04:39 PM   #11 (permalink)
msmogreen
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Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: So Cal
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Well, here's a direct quote from page 32 of Starting Strength (older version):

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Squatting in front of a mirror is a really bad idea. Many weight rooms have mirrors on all the walls, making it impossible to squat without a mirror there, within eyesight, giving the trainee its bad feedback. A mirror is a bad tool because it provides information about only one plane, the frontal, and depth cannot be judged by the trainee under the bar from the front. Some obliqueness of angle is required to see the relationship between patella and hip crease, and a mirror set at an oblique angle would produce a neck twist. Cervical rotation under a heavy bar is just as bad an idea as cervical hyperextension under a heavy bar. But the best reason not to use a mirror in front of any multi-joint exercise is that the trainee should be developing kinesthetic sense of movement by paying attention to all the sensory input provided by proprioception, rather than focusing merely on visual input from a mirror. "Learn to feel it, not just see it," is excellent advice.
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