Lifting With Your Muscles in Mind Will Get You Bigger Gains

Heavy lifting, a clean diet, and adequate rest are the basic foundations of building big muscles. But the road to building big muscles doesn't start there, it starts in the same place that lead us to bodybuilding in the first place; our minds. This method of training is called the mind-muscle connection.

If you fail to develop a mind-muscle connection, you will never reach your full muscle building potential. It was by way of Arnold Schwarzenegger that I first heard about the importance of developing a mind-muscle connection, but it took me a few years before I was successful at it.

Before I truly understood the need to "see" the muscle that I was working out getting bigger, I would focus on the "weight" that I was lifting. What I should have been focusing on was my muscle, and allowing it to "feel" every ounce of the weight while I "watched" it grow.

Not after a day of rest, but right then and there, as it was being worked out. During your workouts, lifting the weight is only half of the muscle building process, your mind is the other half. Your mind will ultimately determine what the finished result will be.

The quickest way to develop a mind-muscle connection is to stop working out in front of mirrors. Mirrors allow too much opportunity to look at your muscles react, instead of visualizing the finished product, which are two very different things.

Without mirrors to distract you, you will be left with the weights, your muscles and your imagination, which you are going to let run wild. So the next time you lift, focus on the muscle that you are working out instead of the weight, and let your mind develop the results that you desire. Listen to what Arnold Schwarzenegger says about the mind muscle connection here.