Break your plateau by engaging your mind

"What you focus on expands"



Have you ever heard of the mind - muscle connection. It's not sexy, it doesn't make for great viewing, but it does make for one good thing; an impressive physique.

What are you thinking about when you perform a resistance exercise? Let's keep it simple and use a bench press as an example. My guess would be an intense focus on completing the predetermined number of reps, pushing the weight away from your body, however you can, until you have finished.

This is how you should train, but only when you are getting into resistance training. If you have been doing this kind of training for more than a few months, and have a pretty good idea of all the basic movements etc. then you should be working on a whole new mental level.

You should know by this point that the point of a bench press is to work predominantly the chest and the triceps.

However the truth is, is that there are probably an infinite number of ways to cheat on any given exercise. Getting the predetermined number of reps, at the expense of form is a bad idea.

The point of any exercise is to put a group of muscles under pressure, progressively fatiguing them until they achieve maximum effort and your body thinks, 'I need to adapt to this or I'll die'. 

Seems dramatic but if you think about it, in the wild the only time you ever were stressed that much is if you were hunting something or, something was hunting you. If your body isn't capable, you die.



To achieve this then you need to
maintain perfect form at all costs. When you adjust your form, the exercise which was previously very difficult becomes a little easier and you can get a few more reps. This is bad, because the only reason it is easier is because you are using different muscles to get the job done. Giving the muscles that were on the brink of collapse a break.

They haven't received a big enough stimulus to make adaptation a certainty.

 What you have to do is this:

• Begin the exercise
• Focus first on the tempo (still on the bench press) lower it down in three seconds, be in control
• Pause at the bottom of the rep, eliminate the momentum. You muscles have elastic potential, so you can literally bounce the weight off your muscles, to make it easier. If you don't believe me pause at the bottom of a rep.
• Push up slowly, focus on squeezing your chest and your triceps, but don't rush. Expect each rep to last about 7 seconds, 3 up 1 pause and 3 down.
• Don't lock your elbows or pause at the top! Maintain soft joints, this means that the pressure stays on your muscles and continues the fatiguing process without giving the muscles a break.
• Start again.

This is the amount of thought which should go into every rep on every exercise. I know it isn't sexy and I imagine to achieve this you will probably have to drop the weight down a bit. But are you working out the be fitter, stronger and better looking or to impress people in the gym?