The Mind-Muscle Connection Before you get your back straight, you need to get your mind right. Whether you are running, skiing, weightlifting or jumping, if you can connect with the muscles that make up your core, you could maximize their potential and improve your sport or workout and be less prone to injury. This mind-muscle connection takes patience. You need to educate yourself on how the core muscles work and develop muscle memory of how it feels to lift correctly. Here are some tips. • Realize that training other body parts greatly impacts abdominals. Multijoint exercises like squats, deadlifts and barbell presses are important to core development—if you do them correctly. • Perfect form is essential. I can’t tell you how many times I see people at the gym lifting weights that are too heavy. I cringe as I hear their joints crying when I watch the atrocious form rep after rep, because each time they lift the weight, they bounce off their heels. Take the time to notice if you do this. • Test your form next time you train. You may not even realize you use momentum or bounce, so test yourself. Take the standing shoulder press, for example. Say you can lift 70 lb overhead for 10 reps. Try that same exercise again using the same weight, but this time generate all the muscle force from your shoulders and slowly lift overhead with no bounce. Can you still lift the barbell? Maybe, but not without collapsing at your spine and going into a deep back arch, which could cause serious injury. Is it possible to lift that 70-lb barbell overhead without breaking your neutral spine or bouncing? Probably not, so this time reduce your weight to a controllable load. Start using this principle each time you train. It may be an ego killer to reduce your weights, but what is worse, a bruised ego or a shoulder impingement—and no abs? • Brace your spine. Let’s start off with a lighter weight, say 35 lb. Before you lift the new weight overhead, brace your spine (imagine someone is coming in to punch you; you brace your spine to avoid getting winded). Now your core is active and your glutes will be firing, too. Try to slowly raise the weights overhead using just your shoulder muscles to lift. This takes focus, as deltoids are predominant muscles and upper traps will try to get in on the movement as well. You should feel the difference. If not, be persistent. Keep trying. Reduce the weight and go slower each rep, focusing on the actual muscle doing the work and discouraging the use of other muscles. • Get over using less weight. Once your body gets stronger, you will be able to surpass your previous high. Start each training session with this mind-muscle focus and you’ll get there before you know it. Read more here:
Posted on: Mon, 28 Apr 2014 19:13:46 +0000
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