Picking on Someone's Exercise Form Isn't the Dunk You Think It Is

MTG’s power cleans are fine, but the popular obsession with “form” isn’t.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is posting Crossfit videos again. This time she seems to be doing it to continue an altercation that began on the House floor. In the past, she’s used similar clips to pander to Christians, endorse Donald Trump, and, most famously to imply, mid-pandemic, that exercise was a good substitute for the COVID vaccines. Before you ask me but isn’t her form on those exercises terrible? (and I will answer that question!) I would like to invite you to ask yourself something first.

That question is: Why is she posting these exercise videos? There are many right answers, but the way I see it, she’s using exercise as a symbol—as a way of moralizing. Consider this one, in which she’s claiming to show strength in the face of persecution (the persecution being that extremists are being labeled as extremists, and she’s one of them). Or take yesterday’s clip—the one posted after another congresswoman referred to an unspecified someone as having a “bleach blonde, bad built butch body.” The caption on the clip is about how Greene is “built and strong.” The implication here is that her fitness level makes her a better person. 

But that’s all bullshit. You’re not a better or worse person—a stronger person in a moral sense—because of what you can or cannot do in the gym. Think about that for a minute. Now ask me again to critique her form. You really want to hear that she’s doing her exercises incorrectly, because that would give you a satisfying feeling of superiority: Maybe you can’t do a perfect power clean, but you’d love to hear that MTG has tried and failed. Would that make her a worse person? (Can she be a worse person?)

Let’s stop moralizing “form”

What is it supposed to say about a person, that they have terrible “form” when they do an exercise? Steeped as I am in the fitness world, I’ve heard it all. People who have bad form—that is, people who do an exercise incorrectly—are too stupid to figure out how to do the lifts correctly, or they have too big an ego to follow directions. They disregard the sacred rules of (checks notes) playing with heavy toys while thinking that they know better than the rest of us. They’re going to get hurt, and it will be their fault, and they will deserve it!

Together, these sentiments amount to a high drama policing of the tiniest actions of other people’s bodies. If somebody squats but doesn’t get their hips below their knees, who are they hurting? If a teenager picks up a weight too big to strict curl, and uses momentum to swing it into position…so what? Those people might not be training in the most effective way (or maybe they are, but that’s a bombshell for another day), but there’s no reason to feel personally offended just because it is happening next to you in the gym. 

(I will now pause while everybody scrolls down to the comments to tell me why I am wrong, actually, and the form police must save such people from themselves. Never mind that there’s no evidence that “wrong” exercises or form increase injury risk. Dire warnings about the danger are based pretty much entirely on wishful thinking and a desire to dunk.) 

Sometimes a person using bad form is a person who is still learning the lift. Other times they are doing a lift you don’t personally understand—for example, somebody doing kipping pullups does not have the same goal as somebody who is doing strict pullups, and both are valid exercises for different reasons. I can do 10 strict pullups. I can’t string together more than three or four kipping pullups. They’re more gymnastic skill than strength work, and both are legit forms of athleticism. Even “ego lifting” isn’t all bad—it’s okay to test your limits in the gym! It’s okay to have fun!  Lay off!

But her form is terrible, right? 

Look, the only thing you need to know about MTG is that she is a right-wing political extremist and professional troll who does not belong anywhere near a role in government due to her toxic views and her attempts to inflict real harm on the American public. This is true whether or not she is good at Crossfit.

And this is where I must deliver the worst news you’ll read today: She’s good at Crossfit, actually. Or at least, not any worse than the average person at your local functional fitness gym. As I told Jezebel back when Greene posted that anti-vaccine clip, her lifts, and even her butterfly pullups, are also fine. 

The most recent video is of her doing power cleans, an exercise adapted from Olympic weightlifting that is a workhorse of not just weightlifting and Crossfit workouts, but also athletic teams’ weight rooms everywhere. For comparison, here’s a video of me doing the same exercise: 

Tweet may have been deleted

Since I am certified as a USA Weightlifting Level 2 coach (yes, I’m pulling rank here), I can look at her power cleans and note a few areas for improvement. She could use her legs a little more in the initial push off the floor, for example; crossfitters are notorious for a sort of forward-bouncing bar path that wouldn’t be considered ideal in the competitive weightlifting world. I think my power cleans are better, but to be totally fair, there are things I could improve as well. We both do our power cleans worse than world-class weightlifters, but better than your average high school football player.

Does knowing that change how you feel about MTG? Do you now join her in believing that the 2020 election was stolen, or that we urgently must take healthcare away from pregnant and trans people? Of course not, because none of that had anything to do with whether she was performing her power cleans correctly.