[karategirl]

Interesting study
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4861268.stm

Thinking about the way your muscles work could physically boost your strength, research suggests.
A Hull University team asked 30 subjects to do biceps curls and found their muscles worked more when they focused on what the muscles were doing.

But lower rates of muscle activity were recorded when they simply visualised themselves lifting the weight.

The study is being presented at the British Psychological Society conference in Cardiff on Friday.

When athletes are at the starting line they are primarily focusing on the end of the track rather than what their legs are doing

The team wired their subjects up to weight machines which monitored levels of electrical activity in their biceps and asked them to think in two different ways while exercising.

The more electrical activity measured - the more the muscle is doing.

When subjects were asked to focus on what their muscles were doing and how they were working there were significantly higher levels of electrical activity.

But when they were asked to visualise lifting the weight, electrical activity was lower.

Earlier studies have shown that thinking about what muscles are actually doing can make more skilful tasks like throwing a ball more difficult.

Penalty kick

Dr David Marchant explains: "When athletes are at the starting line they are primarily focusing on the end of the track rather than what their legs are doing."

If they focused on the actual movement in their legs they probably would not perform as well, he said.

But this research shows it can be helpful to focus directly on the muscles to improve muscle strength.

Dr Marchant added: "Say you have a footballer who's got some sort of muscular injury he wants to repair - ask him to think about what the muscle is actually doing while he is exercising and it is better.

"But if he's going to kick a penalty - don't get him to think about the muscle because it will go wrong. Instead focus on the goal."

Mental imaging

Dr Marchant suggest the reason why the penalty kick will fail in this scenario is because the player's muscle is over-activated by the mental focus on it.

He suggested that sports coaches and trainers would benefit from tailoring their instructions depending on what they wanted to achieve.

Dr Jim Golby, expert in sports and mental toughness at the University of Teesside's Social Futures Institute, said the study was an interesting one which tested how mental imaging affected performance.

But he said testing the subjects with 10 repetitions did not really replicate any real life sporting conditions.

[Mulletsoldier]

I totally believe this, I think I have a really good mind to muscle connection and always visualize what the muscle is doing as opposed to the end rep..Good read..

[jminis]

I agree, the mind is a powerful thing.

[Grassroots082]

I agree too, but my mind is probably my weakest bodypart .

[spatch]

In a simmular study shown on the Discovery channel, people who were hypnotized did something wierd...


When someone said "you are about to be touched with a lit ciguar" and they placed a room temerature object on the patients skin, the skin blistered.


Wierd stuff.

[bodysculpt]

sorry to bring up an old thread but.. has anyone here actually been hypnotized to say, lift a couple of extra reps or lbs..?

I dont think it costs much to get a psych/hypnotist to programme this into your brain question is will it make a difference.. if only by a few reps that would be worth it..

any real world experiences?

i just notice when doing the last couple of sets on the heavy exercises for example squats/bench i tend to get that feeling of apprehension/failure and Im sure it has a negative adverse affect as well as prolonging the workout