It’s Only Mental
An athletic, muscular guy stands over a barbell that’s about twice home refinancing information bodyweight: His goal is to snatch it, which means he has to rip it from the ground to arm’s length overhead in one complete movement. Not a mean feat Viagra strength but something he has done many times. When he misses on his first attempt, both he and his coach look disappointed but not unduly alarmed. When he misses on the second attempt, they both show real concern. When he misses the third time, he’s out of the Olympics, bringing home no medal instead of the gold they had figured was his for the taking. People who know him understand that he is fully capable of making that lift, so they shake their heads and say, ” It’s only mental”—as if that somehow lessens the disaster.
We could examine this comment from more than one perspective, but let’s focus on the idea that something mental is less important or less powerful than something physical. In fact, mental events are not only very real, but they also have a profound effect on physical events. “Cute idea,” you say, “but I’m looking for another 25 pounds of muscle on my body and another 100 pounds on my P.R. deadlift.” Then you’d really better read on, because what we’re about to discuss can make the difference between meeting your goals or loan consolidation education comfortable with always doing less. That’s all.
One of the most vivid examples of mental power comes from voodoo—not the muscle-building-hype variety but the real thing, where victims die because they believe their death is the inevitable result of spells. Maybe you think that’s an isolated case of mind, over matter. The truth is that there are many, many documented cases of sudden death, evidently from psychological causes, and the cases are not limited to “primitive” cultures or even to people with overactive imaginations: The phenomenon has been demonstrated in the laboratory with rats. While the results are anything but clear-cut, impotence least some studies have shown a link between psychological factors such as optimism or pessimism and both the likelihood of getting cancer and the outcome once you have it. Once again, it’s “just” the mind intervening.
Consider the tales–both real and apocryphal–about frail but frantic persons lifting an enormously heavy object off a loved one to save his or her life. Or maybe you know people who are always too busy to do this or that or are incapacitated by aches and pains, but invite them to dinner, let alone to be your guest on a cruise or a European vacation, and, voila there’s time available and the pain has vanished. Miracles like that happen every day , proving just what a powerful force attitude can be.
To understand how what you think is fundamentally shapes what you get from your training, let’s start with goals. conference calls unlimited people don’t have any, so where they end up may or may not be a place they like. Other people have their goals down to a nit. For example, a few years ago I met a young salesman in Germany who told me his career goals, each of which was tied to the specific BMW model he hoped to be driving at the stage of his life.
Most of us aren’t quite focused, but that’s no excuse not to start trying right now. What are you attempting to do in the next year? Maybe drop 15 pounds of fat or add that much muscle? Next, define some milestones: If you bench 225 right now and hope to do 300 in a year, don’t leave your progress to chance. Instead, establish intermediate goals, such as 250, 275 and so forth. Even if you can’t figure out the rest of your life right now, you can figure out something and then stick with it. Just as accomplishments feed further accomplishments, indecision and failure fuel more of the same. Don’t be afraid to start making decisions about where you would like to end up and how you will get there.
Media people talk about bringing things down to the lowest common denominator, and while that can be a good way to sell a lot of things, it’s not the road to achievement and success. Similarly, you can always set your goals lower and lower, but why cheat yourself out of what you can become? Interestingly, while some putative experts in building strength and muscle advocate less and less training, a fundamental principle evident in the training regimens of the world’s top weightlifters is that their training loads are always increasing–and they lift heavier and heavier weights as a result. Just remember that while you were training two or three times every two weeks, the athletes who will win gold medals were probably training two or three times a day. Go ahead and mumble about genes, supplements or whatever else you might choose, but the truth is that the body can adapt up as well as down, which is why there’s a very strong correlation between effort and results. A friend of mine said he is so tired of people calling him up for training advice and then whining, ” But I can’t train often, I’d be to sore,” that he screams at them, ” Why don’t you just not train at all–then you’ll never be sore!” Don’t sell yourself short by convincing yourself that you can only do less and less.
Saying something is ” it’s only mental” is like saying ” it’s only gravity.” It’s about as real as a rock in the road: You can ignore it and risk a crash, or you can acknowledge its presence and successfully deal with it. The sooner you get rid of the idea that something is “only” mental, the sooner you’ll gain use of the most powerful training tool in the world, your mind.
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