Mind in the Muscle
Putting your mind in the muscle is an old bodybuilding term for connecting your mind with your body and seeing as well as feeling every single rep. When you put your mind in the muscle you see what you want to see and this is one way you can use your mind to help you grow new muscle. Arnold Schwarzenegger was an advocate of the mind in the muscle technique and he would see in his mind what he wanted to see on his body.
When you practice putting the mind in the muscle when you are working out in the gym you can choose to see the muscles you want, not necessarily the muscles you have. Let me explain. If you are doing a set of standing barbell curls you will see your biceps as long thick muscles stretched out at the beginning of the movement and as you life the bar and begin to contract your biceps you will see them coming to an enormous peak at the top of the movement. As you flex your biceps hard at the top point of the exercise you don’t actually have to be looking at your biceps but in your mind’s eye you can see them clearly and as you see them you see them as huge.
Use your imagination when you visualize your biceps, see as much detail as you can. When you see you biceps in your mind you really want to concentrate hard on only the movement of the exercise and the contraction of the muscle. To do this most effectively you want to block out all other stimulus surrounding you and clear your mind of all other thoughts about anything else that is going on in your life. You can resume thinking about the other things in your life after you finish your workout. When you are training, just concentrate on training, nothing else. It is by staying focused that will get you the results you want sooner rather than later.
As you feel your biceps straining when you lift the weight, really focus your mind on only the biceps and feel the muscle from the inside of your arm to the outside of the skin covering the muscle. You should be so in tune with your biceps that you really can’t hear, see or feel anything but your biceps. As you flex your biceps at the top of the movement you may even feel the hot sweat cascading down from those huge peaky biceps.
If you have never tried this technique of putting your mind in the muscle, try it out on your next workout and you may be surprised at how much of an insane pump you get in your muscles all the way down to the core. You can put your mind in the muscle when training all the different bodyparts from arms through to legs. It always works the same when you block everything else out and just keep your mind and your focus on the muscle you are training. It’s an old and simple technique but it really works for accelerated muscle growth.
FitBuff.com's Total Mind and Body Fitness Blog
August 6th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Total Mind and Body Fitness Carnival #9…
Monday is Blog Carnivals Day. A Blog Carnival is basically a collection of articles or blog posts, all relating to a similar subject, that are gathered together for your viewing pleasure.
Nick Irons
August 27th, 2007 at 5:52 am
Congratulations on being included in the NutritionFrenzy.com’s Health and Fitness Forum. I have a similar post called “Top 10 Reasons to Exercise” that can be found at:http://marylandpersonaltrainer.com/wordpress/weight-loss/top-10-reasons-to-exercise.