Focus Increases Strength

Hope that this newsletter finds you all well, blessed, and training smart.

This weekend I’m off to the Old-Time Barbell Societies annual dinner. I am truly honored to have been invited to perform for this group. So in that mindset I wanted to address the importance of being thankful.

We seem to remember to be thankful in moments of great peril or when we are brought back to the realization that our loved ones are not immortal. However it’s easy in the mechanics of daily existence to gloss over and forget the simple and small blessings we receive moment to moment. Things we may not even think of as blessings. The fact that you woke up this morning, whether it’s been a bad day or not is a blessing. You’re breathing, you’re mobile, you can think clearly, you have a good spouse, good parents, good children, good friends… you see where I’m going. While some of these may not apply to everyone, we each have components of them that do apply and they are in fact great blessings to our lives.

Did you get from point “A” to point “B” today without having an accident? Another often overlooked blessing. Somewhere out there, someone else wasn’t that fortunate. Each moment we live, each moment we breathe is a gift (cliché but true), and should not be wasted or go without thought. Be appreciative of what you have been given, and make an impact on those around you with it. Strive to take what you have been blessed with and push it to its utmost. We all have been given great potential in one area or another. Do not waste your time, or your efforts allowing these things to founder in mediocrity. Seek excellence in yourself mentally, physically and spiritually. Along your path remember to stop and give thanks for all things both great and small. As these achievements are gifts and should be appreciated greatly.



TRAINING TIP

Today’s training tip is an excerpt from “50 Power Points”

Point 7 – Learning to Focus Will Increase Your Strength

Your body has a built-in ability to create ultimate, powerful, laser point sharp focus!

However most people can only call up a small percentage of this ability at will. Even fewer can call it up and apply it to a physical task at will.

Why is it you think that you hear stories about little mothers lifting cars off of their children? Everybody talks about the adrenaline system and its effects and says that's what makes it happen and it's true to some extent. However the part of this connection that is never discussed is the fact that her mind controlled those chemical and physical responses. If the mind has the ability to focus that sharply on a situation and create those chemical and hormonal changes within the body during an emergency, then I believe that its possible for the mind to create a large percentage of that same situation in a non-emergency situation through purposeful, mental control. This also applies to what was referred to in much old time literature as the "strength of a mad man," and it is literally true.

Many mentally impaired people can display tremendous strength because they have no realization of fear and they've broken a conscious link that separates their focus onto multiple plains and chains it to one sharp point at a time. If they're fighting something there is no other thought going on in their head. The same with the mother lifting the car. In claring your mental processes you allow a deeper self to take hold. You allow the expression of your internal self to come through physically and you allow the processes that we keep in check through self-consciousness to turn on the animalistic physical factors of the body. You can literally manipulate your mind into giving your body the short-term physical power possessed by an animal through manipulation of your internal chemicals and hormones.

You are in essence recruiting your own fight or flight response by your conscious will. Some refer to it as part of the psyching up process, part of the focusing process, or whatever you want to call it. It entails blocking every other conscious thought, getting to a place where you're even past visualization, where technique is no longer a conscious thought, it's an ingrained movement. It is complete attention to a level that recruits mind and body into one unit focused on one task. It can be developed and it must be by great lifters. It involves manipulating your own emotional responses to enhance your physical outlay of energy. This is manifested differently in different people.

In competitions you see some people who are extremely outwardly demonstrative and others who are extremely quiet, but both are achieving the same goal through different routes. It simply shows in different ways. This is also part of the idea behind eastern meditation and why an animal has such lightening response and power. It is to bridge the gap created by the conscious mind between instinct and physical expression. The consciousness of thought takes away some of the energy that would flow directly from instinct through the body and delays and weakens some human reactions. (This is only accurate to a point and is a partial explanation meaning you can't summon the strength of a gorilla simply because you have that powerful level of mental control. A gorilla has a much different physical system to work with, but you'll never get all of the power you could get out of your own system if you don't learn to use this technique.)

This level of recruitment is not necessary or productive for every rep of every set, just the big time stuff. Your mental focus, the exclusion of other thoughts, etc., is necessary for every set of every rep, but extending into your own emotional and physical and chemical manipulation is really necessary for the big lifts and not productive for the warm ups. In fact once you learn to do this, you will learn to do it very quickly as this type of mental harnessing burns a tremendous amount of physical energy and will burn you out if you over do it.

If you don't believe this is true then try a light weight simply walking up, not clearing your mind, not focusing at all and pick it up. Then do the same weight again with complete focus and emotional recruitment. You will lift it at least twice as easily. There will be much more power, speed and better form. This is how the body works. If you really want it to be the strongest it can be, you have to master it.