Frequently, the missing link is what’s going on between the ears. Setting specific intentions to make big lifts or improve your skills, mental imagery, and identifying your optimal arousal for the task at hand, can dramatically improve performance in the gym or on the sporting field. ^{1, 2, 3}

It should come as no surprise that going into a workout without a solid target or reason why you’re attempting to improve will produce lackluster results. ⁴ A little less obvious is focusing on your intent around lifting speed and how it relates to performance outcomes.

If you’re looking to improve overall strength, then getting the right intent for speed on the movement/muscle contraction will improve your strength ability. For example, when lowering the weight in a squat or during a bench press, try to do it in a controlled manner with the feeling of tension building up like a bow and arrow. Once you have hit the end range of the lift, then you want to release all that tension, all at once, and try to move your body as fast as you can back to the top of the lift. Remember, it’s the intention of lifting as fast as you can that is the goal because when you have a heavy weight on your back you won’t be moving quickly. It’s just the intention that will give you extra performance and the ability to lift more. On a side note, don’t overlook form for weight or speed. It’s a must to master technique before lifting with speed.

Studying Intent

A recent study examined two groups performing a bench press. They wanted to know if giving an instruction to move faster during lifts to one group would produce more intent than a self-guided group with no instruction. ² The group that had intention and instruction to lift the bar at a faster speed showed a significant improvement of 10% in total weight lifted compared with the self-regulated group which experienced much slower lifts. It was also shown that there was significantly more muscle activation in the working muscles when the intention of a faster lift was set. This could be linked not only to velocity, but also to a mind-muscle connection. ^{2, 5}

It has been well known for some time in bodybuilding communities that there is a strong link between the mind and the muscle. Now, there is science to back it up. ⁵ This isn’t some mystic new age phenomenon—rather, having a clear intention around training and outcomes in your mind will serve you well in your training endeavors.

Intention Strategies for Increased Performance

Applying this concept is extremely simple, all you need to do is focus your attention into the working area. It’s much like a body scan in meditation. For example, in a bicep curl, place all your focus into the biceps and concentrate on the sensations of the exercise while trying to squeeze the muscle as hard as possible for each rep. You’ll be amazed what a difference being present makes as opposed to thinking about what you are going to have for dinner.

Focusing on your mental approach improves performance in strength and speed aspects and can also allow you to make substantial progress in more skill based sports and training. ^{6, 7} Using mental imagery or rehearsal is a great way to improve strength and can help with more complex tasks that require a high level of skill. Practicing your golf swing or snatch in your mind will increase your power output (distance hit or weight lifted) and can also improve your accuracy and precision. ^{8, 9}

It might sound strange, but when you’re driving or walking to the gym, try to think over your program and each lift you will be doing. It’s a great way to arrive ready for action and it will ultimately improve your performance. Always consider what improvements you seek and why they are important to you.

The Role of Arousal

Factoring in arousal levels can also play a big part in results if an optimal range is set for an exercise or skill that is being performed. ¹⁰ If mental arousal levels are too low, then performance will also be less than optimal. An example of this is when you are too relaxed before an exercise or skill work. When arousal increases performance also increases. This continues up to a point then, if the person continues to be over-aroused, performance will drop. It must be noted that each individual has his or her very own specific optimal arousal level. This can be dependent on personality types and/or how complex the skill is. The more complex the task is, the less arousal will be required for accuracy.

Because arousal is highly individual, my advice is to start small with playing some of your favorite music before your next set to see if it makes a difference. Then, you can titrate the arousal up by jumping around and getting your training partner to yell words of encouragement. If you want to go all out, try smelling salts and give yourself a few slaps in the face. Please remember to quantify this by your lift performance. Did you lift more? Was there a benefit? If you are not assessing, then you’re guessing.

Make Intent Work for You

Don’t overlook your mental intention. This is one of the most controllable and influential factors that can increase your performance. Make sure you develop the right mindset for each exercise, establish a mental connection to your muscle groups, use mental rehearsal for complex skills or movements, and establish optimal arousal levels. Attack the mind and the body will follow.

References:

1. Karl Halvor Teigen, ‘Yerkes-Dodson: A Law for All Seasons‘, Theory & Psychology 4, no. 4 (1994): 525-47.

2. J Padulo et al., ‘Effect of Different Pushing Speeds on Bench Press‘, International journal of sports medicine 33, no. 05 (2012): 376-80.

3. David G Behm and DIGBY G Sale, ‘Intended Rather Than Actual Movement Velocity Determines Velocity-Specific Training Response‘, Journal of Applied Physiology 74, no. 1 (1993): 359-68.

4. Edwin A Locke and Gary P Latham, ‘The Application of Goal Setting to Sports‘, Journal of sport psychology 7, no. 3 (1985): 205-22.

5.  Joaquin Calatayud et al., ‘Importance of Mind-Muscle Connection During Progressive Resistance Training‘, European journal of applied physiology 116, no. 3 (2016): 527-33.

6.  Robert Weinberg, ‘Does Imagery Work? Effects on Performance and Mental Skills‘, Journal of Imagery Research in Sport and Physical Activity 3, no. 1 (2008): 1-21.

7. Dave Smith et al., ‘It’s All in the Mind: Pettlep-Based Imagery and Sports Performance‘, Journal of Applied Sport Psychology 19, no. 1 (2007): 80-92.

8. Vinoth K Ranganathan et al., ‘From Mental Power to Muscle Power—Gaining Strength by Using the Mind‘, Neuropsychologia 42, no. 7 (2004): 944-56.

9. Giuliano Fontani et al., ‘Effect of Mental Imagery on the Development of Skilled Motor Actions‘, Perceptual and motor skills 105, no. 3 (2007): 803-26.

10. Marvin Zuckerman, Sensation Seeking (Psychology Revivals): Beyond the Optimal Level of Arousal,  (Psychology Press, 2014).

The post Lift More and Perform Better Using Mental Intention appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Just as the body has to obey the laws of nature and physical properties, the mind has to obey laws of its own. While there are many mental strategies for peak performance, one in particular seems to be the most important, and that is the law of visualization and imagination. The mind must first be able to visualize, picture, or otherwise imagine what it wants the body to accomplish, before the body can set out to accomplish a task.

This is where the concept of imagination comes into play. At first glance, one may think that imagination is something for children or artists, but this could not be further from the truth. The mind’s ability to imagine with depth and detail is just as central to the physical task at hand as the body’s preparedness.

Visualization: The Power to Create Experiences

When talking about the mind’s ability to imagine, create, and envision, it is necessary to understand the exact process. It is not enough to simply think to yourself, “I can do this.” Nor will imagining success guarantee that you will get there. Instead, one needs to invoke the powers of mental imagery. According to author and Ironman triathlete Ralph Teller:

“Mental imagery, also called visualization and mental rehearsal, is the process by which we create or recreate experiences in the mind using information stored in our memory. This structured imagery is aided by a vivid imagination. The more control we have over our imagination, the more we are able to control our performance”

The key phrase here is “create or recreate experiences.” Simply put, you need to trick your mind into believing that you have already gone through with the task and accomplished it. For extreme physical challenges, this means not just idly thinking about the task at hand, but creating the experience piece by piece, down to the most minute detail.

For example, before my third Labor, in which I climbed a 20ft rope until I reached the height of Mt. Everest (29,030ft) for Parkinson’s Disease awareness, I spend weeks inside my own head creating the experience of what it would be like to climb up Mt. Everest. I did not simply sit down and repeatedly think “I am going to climb the height of Mt. Everest”. I actually tricked my mind into believing that I had already done so.

I mentally prepared as if I was actually going to make the literal climb up the steep, rocky face of the world’s highest mountain. This meant imagining every arm-reach up to the next stony handhold. This meant imagining the intense cold of the environment, combined with the intense heat of my body as it exerted every last ounce of energy it had. This meant feeling the splintering rope underneath my hands as I pulled my body weight up with my arms and legs. By the end of my multi-week imagination process, I could actually feel the calluses on my hands, despite not yet having made the actual climb. I could feel the mental exhaustion, coupled with the triumph that one feels after reaching the peak. In essence, my mind fully believed that I had made the climb to the top of Everest even before I attempted and succeeded at the rope climb challenge.

On May 22nd, 2016, the author pulled a 2.2+ ton truck for 22 miles across Death Valley in the Mojave Desert. He did it to raise funds and awareness for veteran suicides.

.

I knew in my heart and in my mind that the rope climb could be accomplished because my mind thought it had already done so. It is hard to describe how intensely one needs to imagine in order to accomplish this feat, but it is possible, and it is one of the greatest resources for accomplishing any task in one’s life, no matter how big or how small.

Imagination and the Flow State

Part of the reason why mental preparation and intense visualization are so crucial to achieving peak performance is because of the concept known as “flow.” Flow, sometimes referred to as “being in the zone,” is something that many people experience, whether during a physical challenge or something that is of extreme interest or importance. Researchers have attempted to outline the effects of flow:

“Among the various characteristics attributed to being in this state are a fusion of body and mind, a heightened sense of skill mastery, deep concentration, emotional buoyancy, increased self-confidence, a focus on the present, low self-consciousness, perceptions of effortlessness, feelings of relaxation, self-transcendence, and automaticity of performance.”

Despite its instinctual nature, it is often difficult to reach this mental state. The flow state is a requirement when setting one’s goals to the highest level, and because it is a fusion of mind and body, the mind is just as important as the body, and vice versa. You could be the most physically fit person in the world, but if you lack self-confidence and imagination, you will fail where an athlete of lesser physical stature will succeed with ease.

Condition the Mind

Peak performance relies on the laws of the mind. You can no more achieve peak performance with a weak mind than you could with a weak body. This symbiotic relationship requires you to pay as much attention to your mental preparation as physical preparation.

Conditioning your mind will necessarily require a much different approach than the body, but you will only reach your potential if you are pushing both to their absolute limits. For the mind, this means painting a detailed mental portrait of what you want to accomplish. You must practice this skill until you have the ability to mentally experience your goal before your feet leave the ground.

The post Imagination: The Mind’s Contribution to Peak Performance appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

I’ll never forget a story a friend told me back in college, when we were taking Judo classes together. It may have been apocrypha, or made up on the spot, or even from a movie I never saw—this friend was known for spinning some yarns—but I don’t care. I like it just the way he told it.

Back in feudal Japan, when Samurai roamed the countryside, a couple master swordsmen found themselves squaring off to fight. These guys were both masters, and the fact that they were both still alive attested to that. For them, a fight meant a fight to the death, and that death could happen in a single stroke. Given the stakes, they each knew they couldn’t just rely on their own strengths. They had to rely on the other’s weaknesses.

So they took their positions, each one eyeing down the other, waiting for an opening; watching for the slightest distraction, the smallest hint of weakness that would invite an attack. But it never happened. They stood there, swords drawn, and kept standing there, until finally the sun went down. Neither of them ever gave an opening. So they both just went home. No one won. No one lost. The fight never happened.

I’m not sure what went on after that. Maybe they settled their dispute over checkers later, or just became pals. The point is, they didn’t even need to compete to find out the other couldn’t be beat. The whole battle took place before it started.

It reminds me of a saying from the great (and historically real) Samurai swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi: “If you can make your opponent flinch, you’ve already won.” Neither of the two Samurai ever flinched; they both had unshakable, invincible mindsets. But that’s the rare exception. Most of the time, someone does flinch, and when they lose, we say they died by the other’s sword.

But what that story teaches is the invisible reality underneath appearances: the loser died by his own mind.

The Battle Is Everywhere

This sort of battle for mental dominance happens all the time, on all different scales, in everyone’s lives, not just these possibly fictional Samurai. It happens at work, in traffic, in athletic competition, in negotiating your kids’ bedtime. It happens between a public speaker and his audience, a performer and his crowd, on dates, and in job interviews. It even happens during solo workouts, when two voices in your head square off, one saying you can’t do it, and the other saying you can. However subtle it may be, and however much we may prefer to ignore it, it’s there. Wherever two or more gather, a primal battle for dominance is with them.

And if the Samurai story sounds sort of strange, it’s because of how rare a stalemate like that is. Usually, the winner and loser—the dominant mind and the submissive mind—are decided in a split second’s time. And once the roles are cast, it’s extraordinarily difficult to change the script. Alpha and Beta positions are set, and the rest of the interaction is framed and determined by that power differential.

So how do we win that mental game? How do we show up so that we’ve already won, and not get caught off guard, flinch, and feel that blade, metaphoric or otherwise, sink into out flesh? In my experience, it comes down to a combination of what I’ll call preparation, intent, and letting go.

Winner and loser are often decided in a split second. How do you arrive at that second better prepared than your opponent?

Own Your Preparation

This one probably seems obvious, and in a way it is. You have to be prepared, well-trained, and well rehearsed. I suppose it’s possible one of those Samurais could have beat the other, even if he was less prepared. A better-trained competitor can drop the ball on the mental side and get beat. But it’s not the kind of thing you want to bank on. So job one is to thoroughly prepare.

Lots of people attribute their wins to proper preparation. But countless people who’ve failed thought they were prepared, too, and probably were, in one sense. It’s entirely possible—and probably not uncommon—to be disciplined and diligent in getting ready, but never let yourself trust that you are ready. No matter how much preparation you do, you can keep spinning out in your mind about all the things that could happen, frantically trying to put out imaginary fires in your head all the way up to, and even during performance.

That’s the difference between preparing and actually being prepared. Being prepared means getting to the point where you can forget about all the preparation you’ve done, because you trust that it’s done. You can do all the training in the world, but if it doesn’t translate into trust and confidence in yourself, you’re never going to be able to relax. If you can’t relax, you can’t improvise, or respond intelligently to the actual situation as it unfolds in real time. You’re opening yourself up to huge vulnerabilities, either from the outside, or from your own internal psych-outs. You’re going to freeze up, and you’re going to flinch.

It’s necessary to be prepared, but it’s not sufficient. You can be a world-class expert in whatever it is you do, and still fail to take the dominant position. There are many talented, capable people out there who never made anything happen because they couldn’t translate their preparation into a win. And that brings us to the next ingredient: intent.

The Intent to Win

Few people play to win. Most play not to lose. And if you start out like that, you’re placing yourself in the inferior position from the get go. You’re on your heels, and it’s up to luck or the mercy of those around you not to steamroll right over you. If you don’t set a solid intent to dominate and win, you might as well bow, bend your head to the blade, and beg the other guy to get it over with fast.

By intent, I don’t just mean a verbal affirmation or a visualization. Those can help to anchor intent, but if they’re not impregnated by a raw, emotional force, they become empty rituals at best, and self-indulgent fantasies at worst. Real intent is a feeling. More than that, it’s a feeling of certainty. It’s not, “I hope this will happen,” or “I want this to happen,” though desire is an important ingredient. It’s a deep, unshakable certainty that this will happen.

For one thing, that puts your victory firmly in the realm of possibility. After all, if you don’t really believe something’s possible, how are you going to make it happen? If you find yourself having a hard time setting a strong intent, that’s a valuable opportunity to inquire into whatever is blocking you. It’s critical to root those blocks out, or at least become aware of them. Your intent will have a hard time taking root if the soil is already overgrown with fears, doubts, and apprehensions.

When you truly succeed in setting your intent, there’s an unmistakable “click” that happens. There’s no longer a question in your mind; the matter is settled. It should feel like going out and actually doing what you’ve intended is just a formality.

When intent is properly set, seemingly miraculous things can occur. Your mind can find ways to succeed that it wouldn’t if it were even the slightest bit unsure of itself. And like preparation, intent has to be so total that once you’ve set it, you can forget about it, trusting it to do its job. Because the final and possibly most important ingredient here is the ability to clear your mind of contents and let go into an inspired performance.

There is no time in a fight to worry about all the possibilities.

The Hardest Step: Letting Go

Once you’ve done everything you can on the level of preparation and intent, it’s time to get out of the way and let them do their work for you. Because although you’re prepared and certain of your win, you don’t know exactly how that win is going to come about. You need to be mentally open, aware, and totally responsive to what’s going on in front of you. You need to be in the moment.

If you’ve prepared properly, you don’t need to be thinking about your performance; if you’ve set your intent, you don’t need to worry about willing your victory. You’ve done everything you can on those two fronts, to the point where you can trust yourself, and now you can forget about both. Those Samurai were both able to not die that day because their minds were empty. They were both completely tuned in to what was actually going on in front of their faces, not lost in ideas or anticipations about what might happen in the next second.

This kind of letting go is a radical inner maneuver, and it can be the most challenging and counterintuitive part of the formula. It means letting go even of your attachment to winning. After all, that attachment doesn’t actually help anything. All it does is breed anxiety and a fear of losing. No matter how much you want the win, there has to be some part of you that is placid and indifferent, watching the whole thing as though from a distance.

When it’s time to perform, desiring a win or fearing a loss can only take up mental space and pull you out of the moment.

Most of us have probably chanced our way into this state of letting go at some point. When we do, we call it being in the zone, or the flow. Things just seem to happen effortlessly, your body moves itself, and your performance exceeds what you thought you were capable of. While it can sometimes seem like an almost mystical state, as though some foreign power has momentarily blessed you with its presence, it’s really just what happens when you get out of your own way. It’s not weird that it happens; it’s weird that it doesn’t happen more often.

Once you’ve prepared properly, set an unshakable intent, and then let go of all attachments and preconceptions, you’ve arrived at an invincible mindset. Like the Samurai, you may not beat the other guy, but he’s definitely not going to beat you. Worst case scenario, you both go home when the sun goes down and practice calligraphy, or whatever Samurai do in their spare time.

How to Get There From Here

As I mentioned, these battles for mental dominance take place all the time, all around you. They can be playful, or they can be deadly serious, but they’re always happening, and they’re certainly happening when anything important is on the line. There’s not space here to give all the countless examples from even a single, ordinary day, but I’m sure you can reflect and see how the principles I’ve outlined above apply to countless situations, big and small. Start looking for them, and you’ll start seeing even more.

In a way, each of these three elements can be seen as offshoots of one thing: mental toughness, a quality which I define very simply as high dominance and low stress. When you’ve got mental toughness dialed in, then it’s easy to win the game before it starts. Unfortunately, too few people take the time to train their minds in a serious way.

There may be a few ways to train mental toughness, but the surefire bullet for me and my clients over the years has been Neuromuscular Release Work (NRW). Since the main obstacle to setting an invincible mindset is basic fear, tension and anxiety, NRW attacks those inner opponents where they live: the brain and the body. Once you win that inner battle with your own primal self, the rest comes easy.

Mental toughness lies at the root of every game we play and every battle we fight, inner and outer. It’s why those Samurai lived to fight another day. And though it may not win you every single battle out there in the world, it’ll win you a lot, and most importantly, it’ll make certain you never beat yourself before you start.

Preparation doesn’t just happen in the gym:

How to Mentally Rehearse Your Weightlifting Competition

The post Get a Samurai Mindset: Unshakable and Invincible appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

I’m always considering new ideas to help me get the most from my training. This week, I thought I’d share a few of them with you. I hope these ideas stimulate your thinking, generate some discussion, and help you make the best possible decisions.

Perfect Is the Enemy of Good

Progress and perfection are not synonyms. They both lead to improvement in theory, but progress is much more sustainable than perfection. In reality, you’ll improve if you consistently do things better – even if only slightly better.

Eating 250 calories less and burning 250 calories more each day (a relatively painless endeavor) results in losing roughly a pound a week. That’s 52 pounds a year. You can accomplish this while eating cookies every day if you want. It doesn’t require perfectionism.

In the same way:

• Doing five minutes of mobility work each day will improve your mobility much more than not doing anything at all.
• Doing a half-ass workout is dramatically more effective than skipping the gym altogether.
• Allowing yourself to occasionally eat banned goodies might help you avoid a full-fledged binge and help you keep your nutrition on track.

The amount of work and stress involved in trying to be perfect, or even close to it, will make you miserable. Make sure consistency is firmly in place before you try to further improve your behaviors. 

Not All Things Are of Equal Importance

Speaking of doing things just a little bit better than usual, an easy way to cheat the system is to learn to distinguish between high-payoff behaviors and lower-payoff habits and activities. Doing so adds a bit of leverage to your efforts. Here are just a few examples:

If fat loss is your objective, daily caloric intake is far more important than meal frequency or food quality. That’s not to say meal frequency and food quality don’t matter at all. It’s just that they don’t have nearly the same impact on fat loss as caloric intake.

“You’ll improve if you consistently do things better-even if only slightly better. It doesn’t require perfectionism.”

If you’ve planned four heavy work sets for squats today, the first work set is responsible for probably 80 percent of the result you’ll get from all four sets. Again, this isn’t to say that the other sets don’t matter – it’s just that they don’t matter nearly as much. Notice how starkly this approach contrasts with perfectionism.

Within your training program, strive to identify areas of deficiency that impact your overall progress. Perhaps your lack of mobility prevents you from safely performing a number of highly beneficial exercises that would take you to the next level.

Along the same lines, which muscle groups or fitness characteristics are at a high level already, and could be put on the back burner in order to free up time and energy to address weaknesses?

You Aren’t Working as Hard as You Think

When I’m not making the progress I’d like, I ask myself these questions:

1. Is the problem that I’m working too hard, or not hard enough?
2. Is the problem that I don’t know what to do, or that I do know what to do, but I’m not doing it?

If you know you’re a hard-driving overachiever, go ahead and skip this one. But for the majority of us, it’s better to assume we’re not working as hard as we could or should be. For example, most people significantly underestimate how much they eat and overestimate how active they are.

If you find yourself facing similar conundrums in your training, I’ve had a successful online coaching service in place for several years now. This is a way for people to train under my direct supervision even if they aren’t local to me. If you’re ready to invest in yourself for 2016, I’d love to be on your team.

This Week’s Training:

Volume: 57,270lb (Last Week: 52,252lb)

Significant Lifts: 2.5” Deficit Deadlift – 365×10

I haven’t been working super hard the past few weeks, but I’m feeling healthy, which is a huge plus. Allowing myself a month of relatively unstructured training inspired me to explore some new exercises and training equipment, including dual low cable curls, knees to elbows, and the football bar.

I’ve also discovered the idea of squatting more frequently. Most of my weekly squat sessions are just a few sets of light goblet squats, but this practice has contributed to happier knees, for whatever reason.

I’m planning to formalize my training cycle a bit starting on New Year’s (typical, right?), but I’m glad a took a month to just play around. I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday, and as always, thanks for following along.

Bodyweight: 200.2lb

Volume: 8,300lb

Power Clean

• Set 1: 45lb × 5
• Set 2: 88lb × 5
• Set 3: 110lb × 3
• Set 4: 132lb × 3
• Set 5: 154lb × 1

Goblet Squat

• Set 1: 30lb × 10
• Set 2: 30lb × 10
• Set 3: 30lb × 10

High Bar Squat

• Set 1: 45lb × 10
• Set 2: 95lb × 10
• Set 3: 135lb × 5
• Set 4: 185lb × 5
• Set 5:205lb × 5

Leg Curl

• Set 1: 70lb × 10
• Set 2: 70lb × 10
• Set 3: 70lb × 10

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Bodyweight: 200.6lb

Volume: 24,310lb

Rusin Shoulder Warm Up

Football Bar Bench 

• Set 1: 40lb × 10
• Set 2: 90lb × 10
• Set 3: 130lb × 10
• Set 4: 150lb × 10
• Set 5: 150lb × 10
• Set 6: 170lb × 8
• Set 7: 150lb × 10

Seated Row

• Set 1: 150lb × 10
• Set 2: 165lb × 10
• Set 3: 165lb × 10
• Set 4: 165lb × 10

Incline Dumbbell Press

• Set 1: 80lb × 10
• Set 2: 110lb × 10
• Set 3: 130lb × 10
• Set 4: 130lb × 10

Dual Cable Low Cable Curl

• Set 1: 80lb × 10
• Set 2: 90lb × 10
• Set 3: 90lb × 10
• Set 4: 90lb × 10

Standing Calf Raise

• Set 1: 50lb × 10

Goblet Squat

• Set 1: 30lb × 10
• Set 2: 30lb × 10
• Set 3: 30lb × 10

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Bodyweight: 202.2lb

Volume: 15,400lb

Goblet Squat

• Set 1: 30lb × 10
• Set 2: 30lb × 10
• Set 3: 30lb × 10

2.5″ Deficit Pull

• Set 1: 135lb × 10
• Set 2: 185lb × 10
• Set 3: 225lb × 10
• Set 4: 275lb × 10
• Set 5: 315lb × 10
• Set 6: 365lb × 10 (Video Below)

Hack Squat

Set 1: 45lb × 10

Set 2: 90lb × 10

Set 3: 115lb × 10

Set 4: 115lb × 10

Saturday, December 26, 2015

Bodyweight: 200lb

Volume: 9,260lb

Military Press

• Set 1: 45lb × 10
• Set 2: 65lb × 10
• Set 3: 85lb × 10
• Set 4: 95lb × 10
• Set 5: 95lb × 8

Goblet Squat

• Set 1: 30lb × 10
• Set 2: 30lb × 10
• Set 3: 30lb × 10

Standing Calf Raise

• Set 1: 50lb × 10
• Set 2: 50lb × 10
• Set 3: 50lb × 10
• Set 4: 50lb × 10

Bicep Curl (Dumbbell)

• Set 1: 40lb × 10
• Set 2: 50lb × 10
• Set 3: 60lb × 10
• Set 4: 60lb × 10
• Set 5: 60lb × 10

Knees To Elbows

• Set 1: 5 reps
• Set 2: 5 reps
• Set 3: 5 reps

Notes: Knees to Elbows/Toes to Bar Efficiency Tips

Rusin Shoulder Warm Up

More Essential Training Concepts:

• No More Circus Tricks: The Proper Progression for Strength
• Ramp Up Your Warm Up: Prepare With Purpose
• Consistent Hard Effort Over Time: The Only Guaranteed Method of Success
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photo courtesy of Jorge Huerta Photography.

The post 3 Mind Hacks to Streamline Your Training appeared first on Breaking Muscle.