Part II of making the mind muscle connection
2 December 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Part II of making the mind muscle connection
ZEROING IN ON THE MIND-MUSCLE ISOLATION CONNECTION
A muscle parable
The next day was leg day and James wandered in dazed and confused. My pecs and triceps are so sore I couldnt lift my arms to shave or comb my hair this morning. He moaned. Thats really too bad, I said, Because yesterdays chest and tricep workout is a happy-time picnic in the park with a gorgeous super model compared to what were going to be doing today. He looked positively frightened as we began full squats. Squats are hell. Thats why theyre so damn effective. I made the kid do something hed never ever done before; go all the way down in the squat without any supportive gear. On his 1st set he reached for his knee wraps and lifting belt and I told him to stuff them right back into his gym bag. His 400-pound partial squats dropped faster than the stock market after the Enron collapse. He struggled with 225 and I had to help him complete the 8th rep. Oh my God, my legs are on fire! He hissed. James was gulping air like hed just run a marathon but I made him do two more sets. He was convulsing so I let him off the hook on the final 20-rep density set. He watched me do my 20-reps with 325. Leg presses caused him to run to the bathroom and toss his lunch. He wobbled out pale and shaking. By making James take the sled down until his knees touched his chest and then lock out fully, two 45s per side were all he could handle. He looked white as a ghost. Feel better? I said. No! he moaned, clutching his gut. We finished off with seated calf raises super-setted with lying leg curls. I went on to standing calf raises and stiff-leg deadlifts. He sat in the corner curled up in a fetal position and called in sick to work the next day.
He surprised me. I thought it a 50-50 proposition that hed return but he showed up a few days later ready to train shoulders. He still walked funny three days later. I got home that night after leg training and had to sit down halfway up the four flights of stairs leading up to my apartment. I still walk like Im drunk. On shoulder day the procedures were repeated and again the full-range-of-motion repetitions sent him reeling. We performed five sets of seated dumbbell presses followed by five sets of press behind the neck. His 60-pound lateral heaves turned into 15-pound super strict laterals. Now his screams were real and not for show. Back day finished the training week and let me just say that by the time we finished deadlifts, power cleans, rows, chins, shrugs and 9-sets of biceps the kid was a ball of pain. Be sure and eat a ton of protein this weekend. I said. Wordlessly he wobbled out the door. The following Monday James showed up for the start of his second real training week. I am still reeling, he said, my body is torn to shreds from my neck to my calvesevery muscle aches. I smiled. He seemed battered but buoyant. I have never felt the degree of fatigue and muscle soreness I am now experiencing. To his everlasting credit, James stuck with it and after three months he underwent an amazing physical transformation. The winning combination was full-range power training and lots and lots of clean calories. I told him, Youll never survive this style of training unless you eat like youve never eaten before; without copious calories your body will collapse. He got the message and fired down 5,000 calories per day spread over five meals.
James packed on 25-pounds of muscle in 90-days and because he ate clean and kept up his early morning cardio, 95% of his gains were lean, fat-free muscle. His training poundage increased rapidly after week one; this despite my insisting on technical perfection on every single rep of every single set. His recovery improved dramatically and eventually he was able to completely recover by the next training session. I think the biggest single thing I learned, he said in a reflective moment many months later, was that because of the way in which I trained, all sloppy and poundage crazy, I never made a real mind-muscle connection. Until I began training with you I never had been really sore Im talking deep muscle soreness exactly on the target muscle. There is a real art in performing an exercise in such an exact fashion that the muscle you are supposed to be training actually feels it. Well no kidding. Take a tip from James and crank back on the training poundage and reestablish the mind-muscle connection. Are you able to make the muscle sore as a direct result of specific exercise? Are you able to pinpoint target the exact muscle with the right exercise? Use an extended range-of-motion and a purposefully slow rep speed to establish muscle isolation. Unless you are able to establish the mind-muscle connection your foundation is built on sand. So take a tip from James and lose your preconceptions regarding how a person is supposed to look and act when they train. Establishing proper technical basics will be the smartest training move you can make. Trust me.
Tags:Popularity: 3% [?]
Related Posts:
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
