Success in Body Building - The Proper Mind-Set to Real Success in Sport

An ability to totally concentrate on the working muscles during each set of your workout is absolutely essential if you want to become a champion bodybuilder. Every star in the sport has the ability to establish an unbreakable bridge between the mind and working muscles during a set. Indeed, most champion bodybuilders concentrate so completely during training that they probably wouldn't even notice a jumbo jet crashing in to the other end of the gym!

Most bodybuilders gradually develop this ability to concentrate merely as a consequence of years of steady training. A workout involves much repetition, and you'd probably be bored to death if you didn't think about something. You automatically begin to subconsciously - later consciously - focus your attention on how your body feels during your workout. How is my energy level? Am I stronger or weaker than usual today? How high is my pulse rate? Am I breathing so heavily that I should slow my workout pace?

Muscle contractions and extensions are central to the bodybuilding process, so gradually your mind is drawn to monitor them. Can I contract any harder? Can I do one more rep? Two more? Are my muscles resisting the downward momentum of the bar each repetition? With time, your ability to focus on the working muscles in mindset becomes increasingly acute, until you develop optimum workout concentration, a process that can take literally years.

No serious bodybuilder would dispute how vital good concentration is to building large, high- quality muscles. But why waste months or even years developing it? Isn't there a way to speed up your mastery of complete workout concentration so you can make significant gains long before your competitors?

There is a simple, quick, two-part method of mastering exercise concentration I teach to the competitors I coach. It has helped each athlete to learn to concentrate in less than a third of the normal time required to master this advanced skill. You can master the first part of this method in only two or three days. And simple daily exercises can speed you through the second part in only a few additional weeks. Within a couple short months, you'll have a Ph.D. in workout concentration.

In Part One of the method, you must have a good anatomy chart and a book that offers good written descriptions of all common weight-training movements. For each exercise in your routine, be sure which part(s) of your anatomy should be feeling the movement. Then spend a couple of workouts practicing how to focus your mind on the working muscle group(s) during each set.

It's normal for your mind to be easily distracted at first, skipping quickly off of the working muscles and onto some other stimulus. Part Two of my formula will help you to gradually lengthen the time you can concentrate on the working muscle(s) during each set. And in two or three months, you'll have sufficient concentration ability to focus on the muscles for an entire set.

Your concentration exercise involves lying in bed at night, when it is quiet and you aren't likely to be interrupted, and practicing counting up to 20 without thinking about anything but the numbers themselves. Count slowly, and each time you find a random thought passing into your consciousness, stop counting and start over with number one. Expect to make it up to only about five counts at first, and remain confident that you'll steadily work your counting-number concentration ability upward to the point where it becomes easy to count to 20 without thinking anything but the numbers.

As soon as you are able to count from one to 20, start trying to do sets of 20 counts. You'll keep on improving and will soon be able to do up to 20 total sets of 20 counts without your mind beginning to wander. At that point, you can consider yourself a master of concentration. This ability will carry over readily to your workouts, allowing you to focus totally on your working muscles during each set of your training session.

I know that some readers will be skeptical about this method, thinking it's some type of New Age black magic. But it definitely works when approached in the manner described. Over just the past year I've coached more than 30 men and women who have mastered bodybuilding concentration in less than three months, a skill that used to take years to acquire. And they've all made great gains from their training as a result.