68 Sep/Oct 2017 oxygenmag.com.au
Health
Is
Mind- to - Muscle
Connection
the Missing
Link for You?
IF YOU HAVE BEEN
GOING THROUGH
THE MOTIONS
IN THE WEIGHTS
ROOM AND
AREN’T SEEING
ANY NOTICEABLE
PROGRESS, MAYBE
‘MIND TO MUSCLE’
CONNECTION
COULD BE THE KEY.
A
few years ago, my results from weight training
stalled and I couldn’t work out why. I would often train
with my PT clients out of hours, and counted this as
my workout. What I didn’t realise is that I had stopped
giving myself focused training sessions. I then understood how
important it is to stay connected to my mind when working out,
and to consider the specific exercises and overload techniques that
my own body needed each workout.
After completing a few solo training sessions, I was incredibly
sore and must have inadvertently ‘dropped the ball’ with my
training technique, whilst hitting the weights room with friends.
What I had been doing was focusing so much on my friend and
reminding them to connect their mind to muscle, I didn’t have my
mind on my own workout.
I had to remind myself of the science behind weight training: the
central nervous system and the recruitment of muscle fibres during
an exercise is something that starts in the brain. The brain controls
the movements of skeletal muscles via specialised nerves. In fact
the combination of the nervous system and muscles, working
together to permit movement, is known as the neuromuscular
system.^1
Once I started implementing Mind-to-Muscle Connection
(MMC) techniques into my workouts again, I couldn’t believe the
difference it made. I had always understood the concept of ‘mind-
to-muscle connection’ but wanted to research and understand
more about the science behind it.
Research shows that with focused strength training, we canBY AMELIA RICCI PHOTOGRAPHY BY SEAN PUALIC