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Mind-muscle connection (MMC) refers to paying attention to your body while moving. MMC does more than just promote progress with purpose. It also entails thinking about directly engaging the core muscles as you move.
The mind-muscle connection is an intentional and conscious type of activity. It refers to the capability to direct the tension created during exercise to a muscle group or area of muscle throughout the body, which differs between passive and active strength movement.
When concentrating on the use of muscle groups to generate contractions, the brain recruits a higher proportion of muscle fibers to accomplish the task. This also prevents muscle fibers that are not in use from being innervated. The body can gain size and muscle strength in all the correct spots if you create tension in the correct muscles.
What Is The Importance of the Mind Muscle Connection?
According to research, thinking more deeply about muscles' movement stimulates the muscle tissue more than conducting the exercise without paying attention to it. In other words, the more you focus on the target muscle while going to perform an exercise, the more strength and memory you will gain.
When we direct our thoughts and attention to our movements, neurons in our brain fire and transmit messages to our muscle fibers, causing them to contract. This improves muscle strength as well as natural motion, thus improving the mind-muscle connection.
Does the Mind-Muscle Connection Matter in Workouts?
When people recover from an injury, including brain damage, the connections between our muscles and brain can be damaged, causing signals to travel at a sluggish or slower rate. When people don't use their musculature for an extended period of time, the linkage between the mind and those muscle fibers weakens, resulting in degeneration (shrinking) of our muscles.
Strength training and cardiovascular activity can help lose weight and improve overall strength, mobility, cognitive function, quality of life as well as better the mind-muscle connection.
What to do to Strengthen the Mind-Muscle Connection?
Here are a few things you can do to strengthen this connection:
1) Envisioning
It is important to observe the muscles work when training in front of the mirror, but that may not always be possible.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was a big believer in visualization and thought it helped him maximize his physique when he won Olympias, beating the likes of Sergio Oliva Sr. and Lou Ferrigno. When he trained his biceps, he envisioned them as mountains that grew with every rep. His bicep was judged close to 23 inches at his peak, so the results are proof of the process.
2) Warm-up Sets for Every Exercise
You need to reinforce the mindset discussed earlier. One method for it is to do at least one warm-up set of each exercise.
For the chest, people may perform incline barbell presses, flat barbell flys, seated chest presses, and cable flys. Perform a warm-up set with a lighter weight, aiming to feel the chest contract and stretch with each rep. This can also help the overall quality of your work sets. Moreover, it will help with improving the mind-muscle connection majorly.
3) Doing Each Rep Slowly
While this is a common approach to increase time under tension, it can also assist you in enhancing your mind-muscle connection. Slowing down the reps allows you to feel the muscle starting to work and elongating from beginning to end.
Combine this with exercises such as concentration curls. Slower reps are much more effective in isolation movements like this, and people could fail sooner than expected, but the overall goal will still be met.
Takeaway
During exercise, the mind can communicate with your muscles in a variety of ways. Choose one thing to concentrate on at a time and practice this skill to become more in tune with your body.
If you're new to exercise, start by turning off all distractions. Eccentric contractions are the simplest way to learn and a great way to gain muscle quickly. If you're a seasoned gym goer, concentrate on concentric and isometric contractions and incorporate cues into your workouts to maximize your muscle-building potential.
