Mind Power Techniques And Exercises

The popular saying "mind over matter" holds true in your workouts as well. Pushing your body to its maximum threshold requires more than cardiovascular endurance and muscular strength. Oftentimes, your mind sends signals to your body that its time to stop your chosen activity or workout long before your body is actually physically depleted. But it is possible to recalibrate your brain and take your training efforts to the next level.

Two Key Players

The mind-body link functions on two primary parts of the nervous system: the peripheral nervous system, or PNS, and the central nervous system, or CNS. The CNS contains the brain and spinal column, and receives messages from the environment, decodes them and then sends them to the body. The second part, the PNS, focuses on relaying messages from the CNS to the body's systems that are designed to take action both somatically and autonomically. The PNS also sends messages back to the CNS through different types of receptors located in the body.

Basic Function

Breaking down the many tasks that the nervous system is responsible for can help you understand how you can use this amazing part of your body to your advantage. In a nutshell, the nervous system senses changes inside and outside of the body, decodes these changes, and then responds accordingly by taking action in the form of glandular secretions or muscular contractions.

Perception Techniques

Common goals for athletes and fitness enthusiasts alike include increased training intensity, muscular hypertrophy and better mental concentration. While you can accomplish some of these goals through strategic and individualized training programs, perhaps the greatest source of modification lies in your brain. How you perceive the weight, how you decide to tackle your regimen, and the import and value you place on your goals, as well as the overall impact you feel it will have in your life, have a great correlation to the physical thresholds and limitations you will be able to surpass. Mindlessly lifting, pushing or pulling those weights around is not nearly as effective if there is no directed focus.

Focus

Focusing on technique and form, working within a controlled breathing pattern and sustaining tempo-controlled tension throughout the movement is key. The literal image is of your mind connecting to each muscle fiber attached to the designated muscle you are working out. Some professional bodybuilders work on fine-tuning their mental concentration by squeezing muscles individually, without any synergistic help. They practice focusing all of their effort, tension and concentration on that particular muscle. Another technique that you can employ for a short period of time is to perform super slow reps in order to become accustomed to the feeling the muscle should have while working, and to help perfect your technique.

Pumping Yourself Up

Interesting experiments have been done to demonstrate this connection, one being a classic study conducted by Ariel and Seville, back in 1972. Fifteen male university athletes were put on a seven-week training program, and strength gains were then documented accordingly. During the second stage of the training program, the group completed only four weeks of training, not dissimilar to the first. The variable introduced in this stage was that some of these males were given placebos which they were told were anabolic steroids. The gains in strength were much more significant for those in the second stage that took the placebos, despite the shorter training duration. These individuals believed the gains would happen because of the variable introduced. So maybe the idea of pumping yourself up before a workout session truly does have physical as well as mental implications, and is definitely another technique to add to your regimen.