by Jason Demakis June 29th, 2016
Are you actually paying attention to what your muscles are doing during your workout…or are you fooling around with your phone, music, and chatting it up with friends?
Arnold says it best: “When I see guys texting, they’re not serious. This is Mickey Mouse stuff!”
Put Your Mind into Your Muscles, or You’re Wasting Your Time
“If you’re going to do something, then DO it. Go all out.”
If there’s one point I like to stress to both students and clients alike, it’s that the single most important (and strongest) muscle at your disposal is your mind.
You won’t find this muscle on even the best, most accurate anatomy charts.
In time, however, you’ll grow to realize that your mind is the skeleton key that will unlock the entirety of your fitness potential.
Your attitude and your approach to your health, fitness, and weight training goals is infinitely more important than the number of sets and reps you do.
How you choose to think and feel about exercise on any given day is going to have a greater impact on your behavior in the weight room than you may currently realize.
Arnold Was Onto Something…
In the golden era of bodybuilding (the 1970’s), transforming your physique in such an extreme manner was nearly unheard of.
It was like the wild west of weight lifting; all kinds of theories being tested, not very much real science to prove what worked and what didn’t.
Bodybuilders were going on instinct, and ironically ended up utilizing several principles that have been founded and applied across the board by various health, fitness, and sports science institutions.
By far the most successful bodybuilder of all time, Arnold Schwarzenegger was ahead of the pack with his deep understanding of how mind affects muscle:
“The weights are just a means to an end; how well you contract the muscles is what training is all about.”
Not only this, but Arnold was already employing visualization techniques – which wouldn’t gain prominence with the public until the rise of the internet, with New Age/Law of Attraction trends:
“In my mind I saw my biceps as mountains, enormously large, and I pictured myself lifting tremendous amounts of weight with these superhuman masses of muscle.”
This all sounds fine and dandy…but is there any actual proof and/or science to back up any of these claims?
As it turns out, there is.
This Power Lies Within The Mind
In 2014, fitness guru Bret Contreras conducted a serious experiment to test these claims, with as little wiggle room for error as possible:
“Essentially, we performed a variety of lower and upper body exercises while utilizing electromyography (EMG) to examine muscle activation. During exercise performance, we concentrated our attention either on activating a particular muscle or on not activating a particular muscle.
What’s very important to understand is that during each exercise, the load, cadence, and mechanics were kept nearly identical. Stances and grip-width and positions were kept identical, bar and movement paths were unchanged, and joint ranges of motion were kept constant. The typical personal trainer, serving as a “referee,” wouldn’t have noticed any differences between the two styles of lifts for each exercise.
We used four different exercises for the lower body: squats, Romanian deadlifts, hip thrusts, and back extensions. We used a barbell load of 135 pounds for squats, RDL’s, and hip thrusts, while we just used bodyweight for back extensions.
Our intention on each exercise was to not use the glutes. In the case of squats, the intention was to instead target the quads, and in the case of RDL’s, the intention was to instead target the hammies. We then performed the tests again, this time with the intention of heavily utilizing the glutes.
We also used four different exercises for the upper body – two pressing movements and two pulling movements. We used bodyweight push-ups and 135-pound bench presses for upper body pressing muscles. The first time we did them, we concentrated on our pectorals and the second time we did them, we focused on the triceps.
For the upper body pulling muscles, we used bodyweight chin-ups and bodyweight inverted rows. Both exercises were performed in two ways, first with an emphasis primarily on the lats, and then with an emphasis on the biceps. We chose to stick with lighter loads as we felt that this would allow for a better ability to steer neural drive, assuming it was even possible, in comparison with heavy loading.
Furthermore, we’ve long noticed pro bodybuilders lifting seemingly very light loads while squeezing the muscles and trying to place maximal tension and metabolic stress on the targeted muscle. Using similarly light loads would allow us to gauge whether there might be merit to their methods.
See the full results of the experiment in detail HERE
Based on this experiment, we can conclude that advanced lifters are quite capable of “steering” neuromuscular drive to and away from muscles, at least with lighter loads.”
As the results show, advanced lifters are absolutely capable of steering their neuromuscular drive via their conscious will and intention to do so.
This technique parallels a lot of LoA truths that are often misinterpreted and misapplied by so many people.
We’re either consciously or unconsciously choosing the nature and depth of our attitude and focus – both of which have an enormous impact on our behavior.
This goes for everything from bodybuilding, to relationships, to your career.
Putting it All Together
In today’s high-tech environment, it’s all too easy to forget about the computer inside your head.
This is the key difference between people who change the world, and people who end up worshiping and buying products and services created by people who understand this principle.
We’ve seen and heard it time and time again from countless sports stars, movie stars, and business folk alike.
You know there’s truth to be applied here.
The question is, do you have the courage to apply it?
I personally challenge you to leave your phone in your car or locker next time you go to the gym.
Focus on your heartbeat, your breathing, your pulse.
Don’t even count your reps or sets.
Put all arbitrary variables out of your mind, and allow your workout to become a form of Vipassana meditation (feeling the sensations of the body as they occur), rather than a calculus lesson.
Put your focus back on your body, and away from your environment.
Put yourself in the head space where you’re the only person in the gym…even if the gym is packed.
Put your mind into your muscles.
If you can mange to do this with half as much focus as you give to your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds during your workout – your progress will become unstoppable.
