The Mind-Muscle Connection

Joe Weider, along with his brother Ben, are considered the founding fathers of bodybuilding.  Together they founded the International Federation of Bodybuilders and created competitions like the Mr Olympia, Ms. Olympia and Master’s Olympia.  He is the publisher of several bodybuilding and fitness-related magazines, most notably Muscle & Fitness, Flex, Men’s Fitness and Shape, and is the manufacturer of a line of fitness equipment and fitness supplements.  But perhaps the most important of his contributions to the health and fitness industry is his series of training methods collected over many years, which became widely known as the Weider Principles.

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Sometimes you just have to wonder what people are thinking. Can they possibly be this incoherent about etiquette or even basic courtesy?  Is a west coast lifting environment different from an east coast lifting environment? That is a question for another day, but for now I have some advice for some specific people who will remain nameless.

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Although Training, Nutrition, Cardio and Supplementation should all be viewed as equally important in your transformation goals, I’d rather miss a workout than miss a meal. Timely nutrition is so important in keeping your body fueled and your calorie levels on track.  You won’t see regression from  missing a workout, although a solid workout schedule is necessary for making progress.  Sometimes you experience conflicts in your daily schedule that can’t be prevented.  In cases like this it is more beneficial to sacrifice you workout for the day and still get that meal in when its time.

Thanks to http://sirprofligacy.wordpress.com/  

A new segment for Mind-Muscle will be outlining some specialized meal plans that can help you with your transformation. This plan will put plenty of mass on your frame, but also some fat. The idea is to give your body more than enough calories to rebuild and transform.  You can always strip off the excess in the summer

• Diet Type – Bulking
• Workout Time – Late Afternoon/Night
• Number of meals – 8

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Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but not everybody wants to lift no heavy-ass weight.

-Ronnie Coleman

Down this road, in a gym far away,

A young man was heard to say,

“ No matter what I do, my legs won’t grow.”

He tried leg extensions, leg curls, and leg presses, too.

Trying to cheat, these sissy squats he’d do.

From the corner of the gym where the big men train,

Through a cloud of chalk and the midst of pain,

Where the noise is made with big Forty-Fives,

A deep voice bellowed as he wrapped his knees.

A very big man with legs like trees.

Laughing as he snatched another plate from the stack,

Chalking his hands and in a monstrous bark,

Said,”Boy, stop lying and don’t say you’ve forgotten,

The trouble with you is you ain’t been SQUATTIN’.”

—-DALE CLARK—

Everyone has a reason they eat and train like they do.  Going to the gym on a schedule or eating 6 times a day is not easy.  Here are the top 10 motivations people have for excelling in health and fitness:

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When performing exercises on the cable & pulley station (also called selectorized weight station), it is important to note in your workout log which type of station was used for the exercise.  The reason is that some stations have more pulleys than others, hence making the exercise easier to perform. For instance, lat pull down stations only have one, maybe two pulleys at the top of the station.  The cable goes from the bar through the pulleys to the stack of weight.  On some adjustable height cable & pulley stations, there are 3 pulleys, to allow for the change in height.  When performing the same exercise on this station, the cable goes from the bar to a cable up top as well as another on the bottom and then to another pulley at the top, then to the weight stack. This allows you to pull from the top or bottom or the stack. Other stations have the cable go from top to bottom to top then to the weight.  This effectively makes the exercise easier because there is more slack to compensate for in the cable and more pulleys to pull the weight through. 

So you can do more weight with more pulleys. If you were to perform the same exercise with the same weight on the two pulley station, you could probably do 1/3 the weight of before.  That is why it is important to note which station you used when recording the weight.  This way you can seamlessly move to this station with out wasting reps and energy trying to find the proper weight with a different station.

1MR™ by BPI Sports stands for “1 More Rep”, so you know this is some kind of preworkout energizer.  But hold on,  BPI Sports describes it as “a big dose of energy, vascularity and strength” from an ultra-concentrated pre-workout formula.  Lets look further into this…

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As I sit in my chair writing this article, I feel like I am going to pass out.  I fear having to get up and walk somewhere.  I struggle to keep my eyes open and even form words that I am typing correctly.  It wasn’t this bad yesterday, I felt a general lack of energy in my legs, but nothing like the overall soreness felt whenever I have to depend on my legs for some type of movement. 

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