Meathead bodybuilders learned through experience that feeling a muscle work during an exercise had a direct relationship to the development of that muscle. The greater the mind-muscle connection, the greater the development. It took science a while to catch up, as usual. But now it’s more or less accepted, in the “evidence based” practice of picking shit up and putting it down, that the mind-muscle connection plays a crucial role in bodybuilding. So what interferes with establishing a solid mind-muscle connection? How do you strengthen it? Can it be taken too far? Let’s dive in. Problem 1: Cue Overkill To get a strong mind-muscle connection, you first have to feel comfortable doing the basic exercise. The complexity of the exercise will determine how long that takes. If you play video games you know that the first levels are what allow you to master the skills of the game. There’s a lot of thinking involved and your reaction times are slow. But the longer you play, the less you have to actually think about the buttons on the controller. This happens with exercises too. It’s required for learning basic technique and also required for learning how to create tension in a target muscle. But once you’ve gotten it down, it’s no longer a challenge to initiate that mind-muscle connection. It just happens. Problems arise when crappy personal trainers give too many cues. You’ve probably witnessed this. The lifter is performing a slow squat while the trainer is barking a zillion different cues at him: “Sit back with your butt, brace your abs, bend at the knees, keep the chest out, twist your feet into the floor, drive back against the bar, head up, hold your farts in, sing a Barney song…” It’s absurd. And most of these cues are wrong anyway. The lifter is going slow because he has too many things to process while trying to move somewhat naturally in an unnatural state – squatting with a heavy barbell on his back. Do you think this many cues will increase the mind-muscle connection? Nope. And this type of mental overload can be a distraction that actually makes the lifter weaker because he’s neurally programming in the most inefficient way possible. But this scenario doesn’t just happen with a trainer. It can happen in your own head when you’re trying to remember every technical detail you’ve ever heard about a lift. If you feel overwhelmed by movement cues, then pare it back to the ones that allow you to execute the movement in a way that feels natural. Practice the exercise that way, then as you acquire more movement mastery, focus on feeling the target muscles work. Problem 2: “Train Movements, Not Muscles!” Getting a strong mind-muscle connection, at a very basic level, means you’re dictating proper tension distribution and increasing activation in a muscle. Interestingly, this is what bodybuilders refer to as “isolating” a muscle. While it’s true that you can’t isolate a muscle in totality, you CAN make sure that certain areas of musculature produce more tension than others. Yet we keep hearing this sentiment over and over again: “Don’t train muscles! Train movements!” This is overly simplistic thinking, even for pure strength athletes. Think of an advanced lifter who’s developed a technical problem in his movement pattern. More often than not, it’s caused by those muscles he hasn’t spent any time developing. Those are the crux of the problem. Lifters of all types who focus only on movement development are going to end up with very dominant muscle groups surrounded by a litany of weak links. Not a good thing for strength athletes. Smart lifters understand the importance of training movements AND training muscles. Smart coaches understand this concept too. Problem 3: Going Too Heavy Progressive overload is still your bread and butter when it comes to building muscle. If you’re not moving more weight for more reps six months from now, then you’re probably not growing much. But the context of that overload matters greatly. A 500-pound bench presser who’s using his pecs, triceps, delts, and upper back as contributors to the lift, will find that he’s using far less weight once he focuses the mind-muscle connection on his pecs. This means he’s shifting tension away from everything else and forcing the pecs to do the majority of the work. When this happens there’s less overall musculature contributing to the lift, but there’s far more tension on the pecs. Dave Tate tells a story about how he was using 150-pound dumbbells for pressing when he was focused on strength development. But once he focused on the mind-muscle connection of his pecs, he was down to using the 70’s. His overall loading went down, but his actual muscular development went up. With a strong mind-muscle connection, you’re progressively overloading a specific muscle. Not a movement. To achieve that, you have to put aside your “more weight” mentality and work within the framework of “more tension on the muscle” and add loading from there. If
Origin: Mastering the Mind-Muscle Connection