Contract muscles by your mind.

THE MAIN SECRET IS THE ABILITY TO FEEL YOUR MUSCLES

Possibly, you think that this topic is not that important. Go to a gym, take a barbell, perform an exercise – muscles will be contracting on their own…

Once, when I was only starting doing bodybuilding I met one professional. At that time I was very interested in finding out why he was working with a light-weight barbell (80 lbs) when performing Barbell Curls. I thought that it was a kind of secret but his answer perplexed me: he answered that for him that weight was heavy enough and that he could contract muscles effectively with just a single bar… ‘You need to understand, man, that only intensity matters,’ he said; but I understood nothing. At that time intensity for me was measured only by workout weights and training duration. Only years after I was able to get the sense of what that athlete was talking about…

He meant his ability to feel the contraction muscles. ‘Why do we need it?’ you can ask. – In order to spend our nervous energy only on this particular working muscle. In a gym a lot of factors distract your attention and it leads to energy wastes. Maximum mental concentration – this is one of the main conditions of high intensity of any muscle effort. When performing an exercise you need to concentrate not on weight lifting but on the feeling of your muscles contraction!

An experienced athlete can perform an exercise with a minimum weight but due to his imagination he’ll be able to workout the target muscle properly and effectively.

It is especially important to gain the ability contract muscles just in the very beginning of your trainings. This ability will guarantee you even development of all muscles. Usually those muscle groups that an athlete feels better grow faster and look more aesthetic in comparison with other ones. In order to avoid training failures, learn to feel the contraction of all your basic muscle groups.

Gym visitors often complain on biceps growth lag. Yes, they workout with huge barbell weights and due to this feel nothing but these weights; they think only about how to lift the barbell up and not to spoil the air. And afterwards they are indignant at absence of progress.

What should you do, then? – Use mental force of your mind. Think about the muscle you are training at the current moment; imagine how muscle fibers are contracting in it; imagine how it’s straining trying to overcome the load. You can close your eyes (like Arnold did) and imagine your biceps to be mountains or balloons that are filling the whole gym with themselves.

In order to learn to feel my muscles contraction I invented a simple but very effective mental method. Each evening before falling asleep I was performing imaginary exercises without weights when lying for about 10-20 minutes; I was additionally contracting the muscle that was engaged in each particular exercise. For example, in the case of chest I was extending my arms forward and was performing imaginary flyes and presses and at the same time was forcibly contracting chest muscles as much as possible. It helped me a lot from the point of growth progress; and it’ll help you as well if you are not lazy to do this simple exercise for muscles contraction.

Written by: Dennis Borisoff
© April  2010 www.gymper.com. All rights reserved. Reprint article with link only.