ONE Thing You Can Do To INSTANTLY Make Your Workouts More Effective

There’s been many times I’ve done a workout and I’ve been thinking about what I’m gonna do after, what’s for dinner, or conversations I’ve recently had, or work that I’ve got going on that I need to hurry up and get back to. I’m sure you can relate, we’ve all done it.

But, did you know that when you instantly focus on your movement and the muscle you’re working, you’re gonna be working that muscle harder, thus getting a more effective workout in?

This is known as ‘Mind Muscle Connection' and has been heavily backed by science.

So, by simply consciously placing your attention on the contraction of your bicep, during a bicep curl for example, the quality of the contraction of the curl is enhanced. Aka, give me the gains, baby!

But, HOW?! I can hear you cry!

“Acetylcholine” is the neurotransmitter that stimulates your muscles to move. When we’re moving, regardless of the movement, our brain and nervous system are working in partnership to create the quality of the movement.

Studies have shown that consciously focusing on your muscles as they’re contracting causes more muscle fibres to be recruited, producing more acetylcholine, therefore resulting in an enhanced quality of contraction.

Let’s look at this from a human logic, rather than science - because science isn’t always easy, right?

Have you ever tried to focus when your mind is wandering?

Or, tried to be productive and your thoughts are completely somewhere else?

Maybe you’ve practised picking up a new skill when your brain is too busy or overwhelmed, and found it doesn’t seem to work at all?

Weight / resistance training is no different.

You need to have active attention on what you’re doing in order to progress. Let’s face it, we can’t always control our thoughts and we can’t control when our mind decides to wander, and there’s also nothing wrong with it.

But, as science shows, bringing your attention to focus on the contractions in your muscles, it’ll make a massive difference in the quality of your workouts - and with no added time either, bonus

How to enhance your Mind Muscle Connection

As I briefly touched on earlier with bicep curls, it’s all about activating and recruiting the right muscles to complete the movements you’re doing, with purpose.

If you want to work your chest for example, then it should be your pec muscles that are doing the majority of the work. If you’re not focusing, you could be recruiting too much of your traps, delts, biceps and triceps, and therefore not getting the most out of ‘chest day’.

What to try in your next session

During every exercise, there is a concentric and an eccentric part of the exercise. Essentially, a part when you contract, and a part when you release. A lot of people will use extra momentum from their body on the concentric phase (i.e. swinging their arms and bending at the knees on a bicep curl for momentum to get the weight up), and then will not bother to control the weight on the eccentric phase (as they lower the dumbbell), and this really is where you could be going wrong in your exercises too.

Take this challenge to the gym with you and use it on EVERY exercise you do, and see how much more challenged you feel:

1. Perform the concentric phase quickly and with power. For example, on an overhead press, make sure to use power as you push the barbell or dumbbells upward.

2. Pause at the top of the rep, and make sure to go to the end of the range of movement - no cheating half reps round here!

3. Slowly release with control on the eccentric phase, counting between 3-5 seconds as you lower the bar, for example.

There are many ways to progressively overload, but making sure you nail the above slow, resistance-based approach, is going to help you get gains way faster.

And, there you have it, one very simple, yet effective way to increase the efficiency of your workouts!