– The mind-muscle connection is deliberate contraction and awareness of a muscle.

– Your mind-muscle connection is one of the most important aspects of fitness when it comes to maximizing your potential.

– Mirrors take away from the mind-muscle connection due to the deception of the eyes and can lead to imbalances and injury.

– Muscle activation is amplified with the mind-muscle connection and will lead to more gains.

My mind-muscle connection is why I am who I am.

If you happen to catch me working out at Busy Body Fitness Center in Boca Raton, Florida, you will often see me close my eyes while I work out. With an all-out intensity, I will move weight to maximally target and activate the muscles I’m working with my eyes shut.

My eyes are shut because I’m dreaming of what I want my gorgeous wife to cook for me, NO!

I’m envisioning every single muscle fiber contract and lengthen through the correct pathways, not just moving a weight up and down and counting reps. My focus is to maximally activate the desired muscle(s) I am working out, not to simply work hard, which is the default of many lifters.

Why do I do this? Why do I stop relying on my eyes and instead rely on my mind?

One reason,

GAINS BABY!


Mirrors are great, but…..

There are two reasons mirrors are great. Mirrors provide visual motivation and help correct form.

The visual motivation from seeing yourself in the mirror is undeniable. Some people like me, get motivated by simply seeing themselves work out. Others are motivated by seeing something they don’t like in the mirror and that pushes them to go harder. Mirrors are also great for motivation by showcasing any changes that may be occurring either in the body or form.

Have you ever recorded yourself and thought you were doing something one way and then when you went and watched yourself, you realized you weren’t doing it that way at all, or doing something completely different? I know I have.

I would feel I’m even and symmetrical, only to find out one shoulder was higher than the other the whole time!!

Mirrors provide amazing instant feedback on form and what is happening for everyone. Beginners especially benefit from the use of mirrors, because it’s highly likely they don’t have a high degree of kinesthetic awareness and proprioception. The definition of kinesthetic awareness and proprioception is your mind’s awareness of your body through space and time.

Unfortunately, the very thing that helps beginners due to their lack of mind-muscle connectivity, can hold them back from developing the mind-muscle connection.


Mind-Muscle Connection

If I had to pinpoint the main reason why I’m the size and shape I am, can run faster, jump higher, am more flexible and lift more than most, especially at my size, and what separates me from the crowd, hands down would be my mind-muscle connection.

As I stated in the beginning, I tend to close my eyes to reduce any other distractions other than the feeling of the muscle being worked and exactly what is happening to that muscle. Even when I’m not closing my eyes, I’m rarely relying on my eyes and am staring off into space. The entire time, the sole focus is to maximally activate my muscles and to think of the fibers moving the weight, not just moving the weight.

When I work out legs, I’m not thinking of moving the weight, going up or down, or counting one, two, three. I’m thinking of the exact area of my legs I want to work out. For me when I’m working out legs, I will usually be focusing on my butt, because not only do I want to grow that the most, I know that if the butt is maximally activated, then I am most likely doing the lift right.


Make your mind-muscle connection a dream

When I was younger, I read somewhere that Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn’t just think of the muscle while he was working out, he would take it one step further and think and convince himself that his muscles were bigger than they were. Arnold would envision his arms being 24” big while bicep curling. He would visualize himself with these huge arms while he was working out. He would feel the muscle fibers working as a 24” arm, not a 20” arm like it was.

I utilize this technique as often as I possibly can because when I think about it, it makes sense.

Think about pain. If you are cutting vegetables with an extremely sharp knife and you cut your finger to the bone, but haven’t realized it yet, you won’t feel pain. It isn’t until you see the blood and register it in your mind that you get the rush of pain.

If your mind can control your pain receptors and nerves that easily, wouldn’t it just make sense that they would control the level and ability of your muscle gains?

And then, wouldn’t it make sense that if you were convincing it every single time for years that your muscles are twice the size that they actually are, that they would send more blood, more oxygen, more nutrients, and release more hormones than they actually should?

I say YES! and YES! to both questions and believe that this is one of the main reasons I have been able to do and become what most people cannot and aren’t.

Why should I stop looking in the mirror?

I stopped looking in the mirror because I realized I was becoming too dependent on my eyes and didn’t have enough awareness of my body. I was looking in the mirror to make sure I was even and symmetrical, but unfortunately without the solid mind-muscle connection I have today, my eyes were deceiving me, and I developed many acute injuries that would always hold me back.

Just because you look even and symmetrical from the front and to your own eye, doesn’t mean that you are from the back or that your eyes aren’t deceiving you. If you aren’t symmetrical and even when you lift, you can develop hip and back imbalances extremely easy because you’re engaging and stressing one side more than the other. These imbalances can lead to injury and force you to move in ways to make up for the imbalances, i.e. limping, ducked feet, rounded back, etc.


How can I strengthen my mind-muscle connection?

I recommend two things to strengthen your mind-muscle connection. One is to practice flexing your muscles individually. If you can’t flex your muscles individually from each other, then you have a weak mind-muscle connection. For example, in order to bounce your chest muscles up and down like Terry Crews, you have to have a developed mind to chest muscle connection.

The second thing that will strengthen your mind-muscle connection is to keep doing what you’re doing and utilize the mirror but, add one additional step. When you are lifting weights, take time every set to not look at the mirror, but feel your muscles working, feel the entire body and determine if it is working evenly or not. Ask yourself if your abs are engaged evenly, if you feel one muscle working in one area and one in another. These are the questions that will build your mind-muscle connection and result in better performance, health and more gains.