The Mind Muscle Connection: Better Strength & Better Muscle
“Through this process, the entire attention flowed into the muscles active at the moment and the inner expectation of a strengthening resulted in an advantageous change of the physique” (p 8 You Are As Strong As You Wish To Be)
Context
Training the mind is equally as important as training the muscle. Good ways to do this in everyday life are to learn a new skill either through handyman work or academic classes, as well as reading more books. But, in terms of fitness, history has demonstrated that there is a way to better train the mind during a workout.
The first and obvious way is through mental toughness. Mental toughness is key for any type of sport or life in the military. When things become difficult you need to train yourself to keep pushing forward. I have been horrible with this aspect in the past but I’m learning to utilize it a little better now. However, something centered around mental toughness usually takes time.
Holding a strong horse stance
Training to last a few rounds with an opponent
Going on a long run.
Swimming for over half an hour.
Etc.
The second and what I’m exploring in this article, is the use of the mind to attain strength and a better physique.
The sets and reps of whatever you are doing will be beneficial in the beginning. Your muscles and nervous system will adapt to new stimuli. However, after a while, this progress will begin to slow down. There are several solutions to this but I’m starting to see how the mind-muscle connection is the best tool for solving this problem.
“I found out later by experiment that mechanical exercise will only produce good results if interest is directed to the muscles being used. If the mind is directed only to the work being performed, a certain point of muscular resistance is reached; but there it stops. To secure full benefit from the exercise, it is essential that the mind be concentrated on the muscles and not on the work performed.” (p6 Muscle Control, by Maxick)
How can this be the solution? I believe it comes down to how well your muscles activate. Your muscles don’t all fire at once they’re in bundles known as “Motor Units.” Each muscle has a plethora of motor units and within those motor units are the muscle fibers. Whenever we perform a movement or a heavy lift the needed motor units activate to help us complete the task. If not, then nothing is getting done. Usually, the weight/difficulty of the movement will dictate how many units fire but there is a way that allows us to activate more of these units ourselves.
Contracting the muscles needed during a movement will aid us toward this goal.
Even the mechanical muscular contractions produced by apparatus resistance can be made more effective by conscious effort to intensify the power, and attain peak contraction by concentration. (p 1 Health and Strength Annual)
When starting out it won’t be easy to feel what muscles can and should be operating at a higher activation. Slowing down the movement will aid one towards this goal or practicing isolated muscle tension aka muscle control off on the side can help.
If just starting to work out this principle of activating your motor units to a greater degree will not be crucial but it will be down the road. But if you’re just getting started or have been in the game for a while, this will be of great benefit.
Why
I’m a believer in workouts being too long(unless the purpose is mental toughness). The reason for this is two-fold, excessive stress leads to a long recovery time which leads to your defenses being down and possibly leading to sickness.
Then there’s the issue of time. Working for a home improvement/construction company in the past there were long periods in which I would leave my apartment when it was dark and come back when it was dark. I barely had time to myself and I’m single…
And if I become a family man then the time issue will most likely get worse.
Therefore
I find it important to train in a way that will produce the maximum amount of benefits in the smallest amount of time. Progressive Calisthenics, and Overcoming Isometrics have gotten me partially there, but the mind-muscle connection/muscle control is the last piece of the puzzle.
How
Practicing muscle control can aid towards this goal however I believe combining it with what you are already doing will help you cut down on time.
Having most of my workouts be some form of muscle tension training I incorporate these principles into my overcoming isometrics.
Here I’m performing a pistol squat press trying to act against a non-stretch strap. However, the key here is not only just to press but to try and activate the majority of the lower body muscles of the pressing leg. I do this for other movements as well.
But this principle can be applied to other overcoming isometric moves. If it's a push…
try and activate your pushing muscles,
a pull activating your pulling muscles,
a bridge activating your bridging muscles,
and on so and so on.
If it's for strength go for the intensity of the contraction in tandem with the force you are generating against the object of your choosing. For muscles, draw back on the intensity and go for the duration.
In some of the courses given out by Maxick he would have folks doing regular push-ups and squats but they were required to go very slow and feel the muscles as they were going up and down. Not to failure but to slight fatigue. The aim was not to destroy your muscles but to nourish them.
I later saw this concept when looking into Vince Gironda, a bodybuilder/personal trainer through the 1960s and a few decades following.
He often talked about the need for the “Mind to be on the muscle” during physical effort and not on the weight being moved. Similar to Maxick there was no need for large rep ranges just a few reps of focused attention till some fatigue and then going about your day.
For calisthenics movements, you will need to lower the difficulty of the movement you are performing. It doesn't have to be much. Something like a pistol squat and downgrade it to a deep lunge.
Or a reg push-up to an elevated push-up.
Focus
The key to having a good but short session is an intense focus. Your main focus should be on the correct muscles contracting.
If you feel antagonist/ support muscles firing work to actively relax them but not too much.
Are enough motor units in the appropriate muscles being engaged or can I call upon a few more?
Applying these to my isometrics I noticed that there was plenty of room for improvement in my motor units needing to be engaged. With your mind on the muscle, you call the shots. You determine how effective the workout is whether it’s for strength or muscle. If you will it…
“But if a man wanted to badly enough, could he learn to override the governor and use his mind to make his body obey and go forward past it’s learned limits? If he could cleanse all other thoughts and fears and use enough mental concentration, might be able to focus the whole of himself through his hands?
“A life-and-death situation clears the mind of self-imposed limits.” Joe theorized. “But if man has the capacity to do these things, why does he need an outside stimulus, a danger to make him react? Why couldn’t the motivation come from within? (p56 The Spiritual Journey of Joseph Greenstein)
Thank you for making it to the end and if you have any questions let me know….