Can’t Feel The Right Muscles Activate During A Lift? Fix It By Improving Mind Muscle Connection! – ScottHermanFitness

(1:22)- What is the mind-muscle connection?
(2:18)- How Do I Increase Mind-Muscle Connection?

(3:21)- Activating your internal belt!
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(5:39)- Can Your MMC Get Worse Over Time?
(8:38)- Tips To Improve Your Mind-Muscle Connection!

*READ FULL ARTICLE WITH PHOTOS*

Command your muscles to grow! Is this something fun we like to say out loud, or is there some hidden truth to this statement? It’s no secret that beginners have a hard time “feeling” specific muscles when they exercise and the most common question I receive is:

“How do I feel a bench press in my chest when I only feel it in my arms?”

The reason why many people have a hard time “feeling” specific muscles being engaged has to do with their “Mind Muscle Connection (MMC) and I have a news flash for you, it’s not ONLY beginners that have a hard time with this.

What Is The Mind Muscle Connection?
MMC is your ability to increase the number of muscle fibers being recruited when lifting. The more muscle fibers you are able to recruit the stronger you will be on your lifts and the more muscle you will be able to break down to stimulate growth. But this is much more than just feeling the muscle working or visualizing the contraction. It’s a real occurrence that happens inside your body that influences neuromuscular dynamics during resistance training.

The MMC occurs at the neuromuscular junction. What happens is your brain releases a chemical neurotransmitter called ‘Acetylcholine’ to communicate with muscles in the body. Once released at the neuromuscular junction it crosses the “synapses” which is the tiny space that separates the nerve from the muscle where it binds to receptors on the surface of muscle fibers. This is what causes the muscle contraction. Now, if you think about how a single muscle head is made up of many individual muscle fibers you are actually increasing the number of muscle fibers being recruited when you perform a lift by improving your MMC. This will result in more quality muscle contractions which means more strength and growth resulting from your workouts.

How Do I Increase My MMC?
While the majority of us believe in the Mind-Muscle Connection, there are still those who believe that if you just focus on proper form when performing an exercise the right muscles will do their job automatically. This couldn’t be farther from the truth and I am going to explain why. Let’s take a look at some of the big compound lifts such as a squat, deadlift or bench press. There is much more going on here than “I pick things up and put them down”. On deadlifts and squats for example you need to push through your hips with a massive force to complete the exercise. But you won’t lift nearly as much weight unless you learn how to contract your glutes during this portion of the movement. The same can be said for the bench press. You are not just lying on a bench and lifting a bar. You need to plant your feet, flex your glutes, retract your shoulder blades and then learn how to drive through your feet to press the bar. All three exercises also heavily depend on activating your internal belt as well which is a whole other story.

But don’t feel overwhelmed guys, targeting muscles gets easier with practice. A great way to get started would be to spend some time flexing your muscles in the mirror to learn how to activate them independently of each other. You must understand that until you can improve your MMC, you are at a significant disadvantage when compare to an advanced lifter as we can manipulate various exercises to target specific muscles without having to significantly altering our form.

One of the easiest ways to learn how to do this is to work with LIGHT WEIGHT, a SLOW TEMPO and a LIGHTER GRIP when performing various movements. For example try to perform a skull crusher or a barbell bicep curl with a super loose grip and a 2 – 2 – 2 TEMPO. You will notice that this almost instantly takes away the majority of the forearm engagement that would naturally occur during these movements and allow you to really focus and isolate your triceps or biceps.

*CONTINUE READING HERE*

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