Yeah. Also: "what you do in the gym only cements what you have"—what kind of nonsense is this? If you go to a gym with
a weak core and start to work out with free weights you will fix it. How do you cement something that is not even here?
It's not things like the lack of core strength in itself that is a problem. You are right that will improve.
But if you for example go to the gym with a tight posterior chain, you will squat with a form that either hurts your lower back (been there, done that) or makes you emphasise the wrong muscles (been there, done that) and leave you with progressively bigger problems lifting correctly.
Similarly, it is very easy to get used to lifting with a form that is bad for you because it feels easier, which often means emphasising the muscle groups that already feels stronger. E.g. with a weak core a lot of people will lean forwards in the squat and load the spine too much.
I got to about 60kg on my back squats before I kept slamming into a wall because of how bad posture had severely limited my mobility and left me with various weaknesses. I'd repeatedly either fail or hurt my back badly enough I had to back off for 2-3 weeks. As a result after the second time I started hesitating, and kept my weight low, but eventually I'd hit it again.
When I realized what was wrong, it took me 2-3 months of stretches and modified exercises before I had loosened up enough that I flew past 100kg. 6 months later I did 160kg. Now my personal best is 187.5k (which I did at a body weight of 98, so it's no amazing feat, but it's certainly a big difference from struggling with 60%-65% of my body weight...).
But if you for example go to the gym with a tight posterior chain, you will squat with a form that either hurts your lower back... or makes you emphasise the wrong muscles... and leave you with progressively bigger problems lifting correctly.
Not to say that what you ended up doing was wrong, but to me this just indicates the need for a coach, or at least doing a lot more reading before you start lifting. If you have a structurally weak and tight posterior chain, you need to add romanian deadlifts to your program. Nobody (except Rippetoe) advocates blindly following a program like like starting strength. You can lift heavy while you correct imbalances, you just need to make sure the exercises you're doing are correcting the imbalances you have.
Romanian deadlifts was in fact one of the exercises I was doing to try to overcome the problem the first time around. It did nothing for me. Not saying it can't help, but it compared to the speed I progressed at within weeks of starting my stretches, I'll stick with the stretches.
And I did see a coach, who was also a qualified physiotherapist. What I was recommended was pretty much the stretches in the linked article.
Nice. So lifting gave you the impetus to actually do something about your posture.
Yes, for people with posture problems a good coach is even more necessary than for your average Joe who can get away with just watching a few youtube videos, reading a book, and some practice.
I think its a poor way of saying that if you have rather bad posture and work out to build muscle etc, with that bad posture your not necessarily fixing your posture, and may just make it harder to fix in the long run as your muscles build and develop with the bad posture/habits.
However I don't know how accurate or correct that may be.
