• August 11, 2021

Mental Imagery and Mind-Muscle Connection

mind-muscle connection for sports performance

Mental Imagery and Mind-Muscle Connection

Mental Imagery and Mind-Muscle Connection 1024 683 Positive Energy Physical Therapy

Performance Athletes can Also Benefit

If you have ever watched a documentary about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bodybuilding career or seen guys at the gym doing a split day workout, you may have overheard the idea of mind-muscle connection. You may have seen gym partners tapping on the targeted muscle, or people looking or even talking to the muscle they are trying to grow. There is now evidence proving the benefit of mind-muscle connection.

Benefits of promoting a mind-muscle connection

Getting specific muscle activation is not only for your local gym bro or a physique athlete, but it can be beneficial for your performance athletes as well. A stronger mind-muscle connection can establish a greater contribution of a particular muscle group to achieve improvements in movement quality. This enhances both performance and longevity.

How to create a mind-muscle connection:

There are several ways to establish mind-muscle connection. A common method is to use internal cues. For internal cues, the athlete focuses on something within the body to achieve a movement pattern. For example, “squeeze the glute” can be used to perform a squat with more glute dominance.

Other methods of achieving mind muscle connection include giving manual input through touch, and even visually looking at the muscle group in target.

How Positive Energy can help:

We are very much about the mind-muscle connection here at Positive Energy and its implementation in improving sports performance. If you are curious about this concept, give us a call!

mind-muscle connection - focus on muscle when lifting weights