What your mind believes:
“I Need A Gym & Weights To Transform My Body”
What your muscle knows:
“Your Muscle Does NOT Know Where You Are Or What You Are Holding. All It Knows Is The Tension (Squeeze) You Can Place Upon It Through a Range of Motion”
If there is ONE thing you take away and remember from this Handbook, make sure it’s this powerful belief.
I call this the squeeze!
In the fitness freedom community, clients tease me about it BUT IT IS SO IMPORTANT.
Squeeze = Powerfully contract your muscle with mindful intent. Focus on powerfully squeezing the muscle you want to target throughout the entire range of motion.
In this post...
Most people are externally focused when they use a TRX
I bet you can relate to this…
External = mindless
They are thinking about the rep number, what’s the next exercise, when will this be over, what’s the strap length, or life thoughts like money, food, conversations etc etc.
They don’t mindfully focus on the one specific muscle they are targeting and how it feels.
To build lean muscle we need to mindfully connect with the single muscle we are targeting.
We need to internalise our focus and feel our body.
We must place our mind inside the muscle.
We need let go of external distractions. This is why being in your own space and time with a suspension trainer is so beneficial.
In a gym, people are externally distracted.
But in your own space you can really internalise your focus without external distraction.
And focus on squeezing the single muscle you are targeting throughout every single rep. Every single range of motion.
Especially at the top motion of each exercise (Picture the top curl part of a bicep curl).
Being able to do this, feel, and visualise your muscle contracting and stretching is called having a good mind-muscle connection
• Building Lean Muscle
• Transforming Your Body
• Feeling Confident & Healthier
…is in the mind.
Connecting and feeling your body brings you closer to yourself, it makes you more in control and more confident.
It builds and awakens pathways to parts of your body you never knew existed.
You truly become one with your body and mind and it feels awesome!
Workouts Become Meditation
We can literally use our body to master out mind!
When we internalise our focus on the specific muscle we are training. Workouts become a form of mediation.
Meditation is focusing on one thing for an extended period of time.
If you don’t focus on anything else expect your body and the muscle you are training, then you are meditating.
And we know the HUGE benefits of mediation.
Constantly seeking to internalise your focus in every 30 – 50 minute workout, compounds.
And you will feel your mental well-being improving over time.
When you begin to use workouts as a form of meditation, it’s a double whammy.
Not only do you improve you body, but also your mind. It’s a never ending improvement circle. As one improves, so does the other.
I’ve personally found, and had clients report:
- social anxiety reduced
- less procrastinations
- more grounded and calm
- ability to deep work (business success)
- more confident (relationship success)
This is using your body to master your mind.
How do you know if you are using your mind muscle connection?
I’m known to be the ‘SQUEEZE’ king.
It’s because I constantly remind people to SQUEEZE the specific muscle they are training as hard as possible throughout the range of motion.
Especially at the top of exercises.
Take your arm and flex your bicep right now. Pretend you’re showing off those guns…
I’m serious, stop right now and flex your bicep as hard as possible. Let’s see that squeeze face.
I want you to remember the feeling of this squeeze on the bicep muscle.
Now, take your bicep and hold it out straight
Now flex your arm up and down as if you were doing a TRX Bicep Curl.
Feels easy right?
Now straighten your arm out and squeeze your bicep muscle with a straight arm as hard as possible, like you just did when flexing it…
Squeeze some more but don’t let your arm bend.
Now squeeze even more SUPER HARD and now slowly bend your elbow and flex your arm right to the top like you previously did.
Harder right?
That’s mindful muscle connection
The movement is caused by the mindful contraction of a muscle only. Nothing else.
THIS is key!
This powerful squeeze you’ve just done is exactly the squeeze that we take into…
Every single workout…
…Every single rep
…for every single muscle…
Alays.
This is what I teach everyone within the exercise technique videos for all my TRX Suspension Trainer and Resistance Band Programs because it is so important.
The ability to improve is exponential
It gets better the more you practice.
Studies have shown that professional body builders can mindfully connect and contract (squeeze) their muscle to only 50% – 60% of it full potential.
For us everyday people, we’re only at about 20% – 30% ability.
That’s a HUGE area for improvement for building lean muscle and transforming your body. Along with your mind.
It’s the one thing I have relentlessly focused on. And it has improved my physique using only a suspension trainer beyond what I ever thought was possible.
My clients too.
Using mind-muscle connection becomes addictive because it feels amazing. A client said to me…
“I finally understand what a workout should be and feel like” … And it’s so true.
As a foundation, just mastering the mindful muscle connection and muscle-centric technique (covered here), will make a HUGE difference to your fitness results.
Because I’m a nerd and love Star Wars, it’s kinda like Yoda. With just the force (mind-muscle connection) he’s ok.
But combined with muscle-centric technique (light saber), he’s incredible.
The same can be said for our results with a TRX when we use both.
Now imagine the possibilities when this effective mindful muscle-centric technique is combined with other good principles, which I refer to as the layers, to build upon.
Compounded together your results will be exponential. This is what I call Fitness Freedom!
This is how you build muscle muscle longevity
Becoming aware of this and applying it, especially at the peak of exercise movements, will mean you develop healthy muscle density.
By density, I mean building many small-medium muscle fibres that create solid, lean muscle.
This is the key to excellent functional movement and strength. As opposed to building fewer large and thick muscle fibres.
Ones that can be associated with ‘meatheads’ and those who choose to use steroids and put grunting and lifting heavy weights with an ego as their priority.
Often ticking up multiple injuries and poor movement function later in life.
Be proud to focus on that squeeze, be proud to build quality functional muscle. This type of dense muscle lasts a long time.
It’s like buying a wardrobe from a professional woodworker compared to buying a cheap one from Ikea.
The professional woodworker’s wardrobe wood will bend a flex well, it will remain strong and sturdy for a long time, highly resilient to life.
The Ikea one will look good initially but will be rigid and inflexible, snapping and chipping easily.
It will wear and eventually collapse a lot quicker than the professional woodworker’s wardrobe, made from good quality ingredients.
We will develop muscles like our professional woodworker develops his wardrobe – strong, resilient and for longevity.
Practice and develop your mindful muscle-connection.
There are things that can help you develop this…
- Contracting the muscles worked after every set for 5 seconds for mindful-muscle development.
- Isometric holds included at the end of some of your workouts to develop muscular conditioning and the mindful muscle-connection.
They aren’t practices that will suddenly make you The Hulk or make you super slim, but they will improve your mind’s focus and connection to feel individual muscles.
As a result, you’ll be able to work your muscles better, improve faster and in turn they will become more developed from suspension training or resistance band exercise.
The goal is never to ‘just move’
In the ‘fitness industry,’ the ‘mind-muscle connection’ is a widely debated topic, most leading athletes and leading fitness experts recommend practising and incorporating it.
The goal is never just to move your body through a motion, the goal is to try and place effort on the muscles being used by contracting them as hard as possible through the full range of motion…
The tool used for this in our instance is a TRX for suspension trainer or resistance band.
You’ll notice I term it ‘mindful-muscle connection’…
This is because I want you to understand that you need to be mindful within every workout to connect with your muscle.
Labelling it mind-muscle connection isn’t actionable in my opinion.
It’s a bit wet and thrown around by a lot of people who I don’t understand its true value or meaning….
A buzzword if you will, to get more views or likes.
A thought I’d like you to ponder:
“If you can’t challenge your muscles just by the resistance of contracting (squeezing) them…
..you have no right to be picking up weights to add more resistance to contract (squeeze) them”
In simple terms, if you can’t feel or control (contract/squeeze) your muscles without the use of weight…
then why are you training with a weight to do it?
The same principle applies to us using suspension training or resistance bands and our body as the weight.
Mastering technique and form should ALWAYS precede hard work.
Let’s get to it!
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