Mind-Muscle Connection

[00:00:00] Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm Chris Janke and want to talk today about creating a mind muscle connection. Now this first off I admit this seems a little bit out there.

[00:00:30] I'm going to talk about the mind muscle, the mind muscle refers to the fact that with our mind, with our conscious mind I should say we can only focus on one thing at a time.

[00:00:44] Think about a blue elephant. Think about a chair. Think about your right hand. Before I mentioned any of those things you weren't thinking about them until we called them to our attention.

[00:00:58] Think about a blue elephant, a chair and your right hand. And that becomes very hard to do unless you sort of clump them together and make them into one thing.

[00:01:06] So putting that as our foundation we can apply that to weightlifting. We can apply that to cardio.

[00:01:16] And we want to really be focusing on whatever muscles we are working. So that's my first point is that you want to visualize the muscles that you're working.

[00:01:27] Now, that word visualizes a little bit not even 100% accurate either because when you visualize something you sort of create a picture of it in your head.

[00:01:37] But we actually don't necessarily want to do that. We don't want to think about the muscle or we are working. We want to actually feel the muscle we're working.

[00:01:48] So instead of getting in touch with the sense of sight by visualizing what it might look like, we want to visualize and we want to get in touch and connected with the feeling.

[00:02:00] So for example, you're doing bicep curls and you're feeling every millimeter of that motion. You're feeling how it feels as the muscle contracts as you bend your elbow, how it feels as you lower it back down.

[00:02:14] There's a couple reasons why this is very, very, very crucial. And I would say one of the most important skills to master in order to develop strength.

[00:02:26] Two reasons. One is based on what we're trying to achieve and the second is what we're trying to prevent. What are we trying to achieve? We're trying to gain strength.

[00:02:36] And the thing with strength is that you can do an exercise and use different muscles from somebody else doing the same exercise. Here's an example.

[00:02:45] Somebody doing a squat. If they have really good form, their back is straight, they're dropping their hips very low and they're not using weight that's too heavy.

[00:02:55] That person will feel most of the work and thus get most of the development in the quads, the glutes, the hamstrings, the back.

[00:03:04] And take somebody else who is rounding their back. They're not squatting very low. They're using a weight that's too heavy and maybe their knees are caving in.

[00:03:15] This person does not feel the work in their quads, hamstrings, glutes and back. They actually feel the work in their joints. They feel their knees. They feel their hips.

[00:03:26] They feel their lower back in a bad way. And so that's number one, right? Is the results. We're not going to get the same results.

[00:03:37] The second thing, what we're trying to avoid is injury, right?

[00:03:41] One of the best ways to make sure we have consistency over a period of time is to make sure that we don't ever get injured in our workout.

[00:03:49] So if you're not focused on the muscle, more of a chance to get injured.

[00:03:54] So what are some different ways we can focus?

[00:03:59] I alluded to it a minute ago and that is form, form and technique.

[00:04:04] Making sure we are moving in a way that makes it look like we are just the poster child of the exercise.

[00:04:12] This is how you're supposed to move. One of the things I say to my clients very frequently is make it look easy.

[00:04:20] Even if you're feeling a little bit of a burn, it's a little bit challenging but you want to make it look easy.

[00:04:26] And that's easier said than done but there are ways to make it look easy. You can go slower, you can go smoother, you can go softer, you can go lighter with the weight, different ways you can do that.

[00:04:37] Or if you're doing a body weight exercise, you can go to a more basic version of the exercise.

[00:04:44] Every exercise has a more basic version of it until you get to the most basic which is so easy. It looks more like a stretch.

[00:04:52] So let's go back to the squat that we were talking about a minute ago. One version of a squat is a wall sit.

[00:04:59] If a squat is too much, stabilizing your own body weight then just put your back against the wall. That's a version of a squat.

[00:05:07] Now would you believe that you can actually get even lower than a wall sit?

[00:05:12] If that's too hard, your quads are just burning too much, that's too hard. You can drop it down and you can actually go onto your back.

[00:05:19] You can get into a position, it's called the 90-90 position so you're on your back, your legs are up so that your knees and your hips are at 90 degree angles.

[00:05:31] From that position you can put a light ankle weight on each of your ankles and you are using your quads to prevent you from letting your feet come down.

[00:05:41] You can do knee extensions in that position, you can hold it in that position. Basically anything that you do there to work the quad and you have taken weight off.

[00:05:53] The reason I'm talking about this exercise progression is because if you are going too fast into a progression it makes it very hard to reestablish that mind muscle connection.

[00:06:08] I'm sure we've all seen it, that person at the gym who's just lifting way too much weight and just looks like that cannot be healthy.

[00:06:17] That cannot be safe and good. What is not safe is also not going to get you the results.

[00:06:23] We want to focus on form and technique instead of mindlessly going through the motions.

[00:06:29] Pay attention to your form and technique with every exercise and I would say even every repetition.

[00:06:35] Concentrate on maintaining that proper alignment posture and engaging the targeted muscle group throughout the entire range of motion.

[00:06:44] We don't have to wait until we feel the bicep, we can actively recruit the bicep first.

[00:06:51] One way of doing this if you've ever come to my class, you see that I do this quite a bit is hold an isometric position.

[00:06:59] Let's go back to the bicep curl example. You can do bicep curls where you're going repetition up and bend the elbow and then lower it back down or you can do an isometric.

[00:07:10] You can hold the weight at a 90 degree angle in the elbow and just hold, hold, hold.

[00:07:17] One minute, two minutes, whatever you need to really feel that muscle start to burn.

[00:07:22] You can play around with the weight at a time. Once you feel the burn, now you've got it. Now you can do your slow repetitions.

[00:07:32] We want to tune into our body's feedback. We're always getting feedback from the body. It's just a question of whether or not we want to listen to it.

[00:07:41] We want to listen to the body's cues during the workout. Something feels awful uncomfortable. Just take a moment to assess and adjust accordingly.

[00:07:50] If you ignore your body's signals, it can definitely lead to injury as I talked about over exertion.

[00:07:57] So absolutely prioritize the safety and well being by staying attuned to that.

[00:08:03] Let's change pace a little bit. Let's talk about breathing. Mindful breathing until I said that word just there breathing breathing.

[00:08:12] You probably forgot that you even were breathing. I know I forgot.

[00:08:16] So when we bring breathing, which 99% of the day is unconscious and we bring it to our conscious attention,

[00:08:24] we are helping with our mindfulness and our workout.

[00:08:29] Breathing in a sense can be considered an exercise. It uses muscles. We use the diaphragm muscle. When we engage the diaphragm,

[00:08:38] it pulls air in. When we relax the diaphragm muscle, it releases the air out.

[00:08:45] So integrate mindful breathing techniques into your actual workout routine.

[00:08:50] Focus on your breathing and the movement. You've just put yourself in your body. You've taken yourself out of your thinking mind.

[00:09:00] You know we're all chatter boxes in our mind thinking about everything. You've put yourself into your workout.

[00:09:07] Focus on your breath as you move through each exercise, inhaling deeply to prepare and then exhaling fully to release tension and your stress.

[00:09:20] And then I would say repetition. This is the last thing, last 30 seconds or so, I would say that once you get these concepts focusing on the speed,

[00:09:30] focusing on isometrics first, feeling the burn, all that stuff, once you get that down, you have to repeat it.

[00:09:40] Breathing, you have to constantly remind yourself so we have tools to help us. We have our phones, we have alarms in the phone.

[00:09:48] Remember to consciously breathe all that. Don't expect this to happen overnight but expect that it will happen as you practice.

[00:09:55] Thank you so much for listening today. See you guys next time.