Rebuild Your Mind; Rebuild Your Body

No one would expect to be able to build impressive muscles without spending time working hard in the gym. The same then is true of the mental attitude which is necessary in order to be able to work out that hard.

Mental strength does not come to us any more easily or naturally than physical strength. Both need to be carefully trained and developed. No matter what your genetics might dictate on either of these things, you can improve and be better than someone who has not bothered.

The one trait above all others which will see you to success is in maintaining a positive mental attitude. A positive mental attitude is the steroids of the mental strength game.

Where do you get them?

As with any strength training, it has to be done consistently otherwise you will lose any benefits that you’ve gained.

In the Western culture we’ve become accustomed to being negative about things. Our days are filled with complaining about things, being irritated or angry about other people. Road rage is a symptom of a much larger problem.

You need to learn to stop that practice, because what you do to others is reflected in your own self. Anger and frustration can be powerful motivations in a workout to really push yourself, but that assumes that you’ve made it into the gym in the first place.

Remove all negativity from your mind. While you may see negative things in others, don’t mention them, don’t even think about them. Instead find something positive to say. This is very hard to do in my experience, but it also applies to you, yourself. It’s easy to talk yourself into giving up by focusing on the negatives. Focus on the positives. If a workout didn’t go as well as you’d hoped then be determined to do better next time, but focus on the fact that you came and did it.

Normally there is a reason for a workout not going well, so search within yourself to determine why – where you ill, tired, hungry? This is the second secret, which is to learn from every experience, good or bad. Take pleasure in those experiences, because each have something to teach you and if you can learn the lesson you will do better the next time.

Establish a morning ritual where you find those nuggets of benefit in the happenings of the previous day. Start the day with a laugh, even if forced because the biofeedback will make you positive. Start the day in control of your own mind by choosing to only be positive that day.

Only you can develop the strength to stand firm in your own mind. Only you can choose to be unaffected by the moods of others, to instead focus on achieving your aims. This is how you change the rest of your life – what are you going to do about it?

Taking the first step to success

The one thing which defines a person who is successful is that there is clarity in their mind about what they are doing. Knowing what you want is all about defining goals, but simply setting goals is far from enough to ensure success; it is merely the very first step. Remember though that every journey begins with that first step and without it there is no journey.

To begin a journey you need to know the destination. The final destination can be a little vague but the next step in the journey has to be known with crystal clarity if you are to arrive at the place you wanted and not somewhere else.

There are always two things which need you need to be clear about with your goal; what you want and when you want it. You can imagine a goal to the effect that next summer you can have a body which will impress people when you take off your shirt. But what exactly does that mean? As a goal it isn’t very useful – does it mean you will have large muscles, that the muscles are well defined or just what exactly?

Precision about the goal

Be precise about the when. By Summer, do you mean at the start of June or do you mean July or even August? Pick a day and fix it in your mind and if there is something which will act as a lock to stop it shifting such as a competition, a party or a holiday, then so much the better.

Then decide what it is that you want and again be precise. Is it to gain or lose a certain number of pounds? Do you want to add a certain number of inches to your chest or arms? Do you want your body fat percentage to be a certain level?

If you are vague then you are setting yourself up for failure. If you have no clarity about the goal then it’s because you don’t really know what you want. How will you know if you have you really achieved what you wanted or not? If you can’t define the goal with clarity then it means that the goal isn’t really important for you, and things which aren’t important get sidelined very easily.

Rebalancing your life

To achieve a goal you have to create the space in your life to allow the goal to happen. In order to move towards the goal you must move away from something else; you will need to sacrifice things you are doing now. For most people one of the sacrifices will be financial – fitness and health are never cheap options and there are some very expensive ways to spend money. If you have enough money to satisfy every whim, you have very little chance of having enough time to indulge all of the whims which you can afford, so one way or another you will have to overcome limitations.

Achieving goals is all about tipping the balance away from its current stability and creating a new balance where there is no choice but to achieve the goal. The goals you choose and your ability to pay the price necessary to achieve those goals are dictated by your personal values and by your passion for those values. If you have no passion for your new goals you will never muster the energy to make the necessary sacrifices and overcome the obstacles which will block your path. If you can’t muster that passion then perhaps the goal is not in line with your values and you should consider either choosing a new goal or a new time frame in which to achieve it.

The key is to sacrifice those things which have no value for you in terms of the goal. To give up the things which are holding you back – relationships, habits or simply ways of killing time or money in ways that are no longer useful to you. You will not reach your goal unless you take action.

Narrowing your focus

In order to make real progress you need to restrict the number of goals. Every goal will have at least two or three activities related to it – so to build muscle you need to workout, eat well and sleep for example. All of those take time and focus. If you set three goals then you may have nine activities to manage, and very quickly you will lose focus because each activity might have its own challenges. Eating well for example means buying the right foods and taking the time to prepare and eat them. Sleeping well means reducing stress and allowing enough time, but neither of those are easy if you are trying to shoehorn working out into an already crowded schedule. I’d suggest that you have no more than three goals at any on time and even then in an ideal world just work on one at a time. If you really want to be become extraordinary, to do better than the average, then you will need to have only one goal.

Clarity

The degree of clarity you have about the goal and the specific next actions you need to take in order to achieve them will dictate whether or not you succeed or fail. If you review your goals once a week or once a month how likely is it that you will achieve them? Goals need to be reviewed every day; either in the evening or first thing in the morning. Review them and reawaken your passion for achieving them.

Having the actions you need to take fresh in your mind will affect the choices you make during the day. By being in your mind you will notice actions which otherwise might have happened while your mind was on autopilot and busy with another task. Having noticed the trigger point you can make a decision about how to act. Do you eat the cookie or the apple? Without focus your hand likely would have been in the cookie jar long before your mind actually noticed it. People on diets consistently under report the amount of food they eat, simply because they don’t realise that they are eating it. It’s the same as when you drive on a regular journey and have no memory of the actual drive.

Putting it all together

Remember your passion and use it to swing the balance of your life such that achieving the goals becomes easier than not achieving it. Have clarity about your goals and about what you are doing today to move towards the goal.

Every thing that you do either moves you towards your goal or away from it. Every step away from your goal means having to take another step just to get back to where you are now, a step that would otherwise have moved you towards your goal. It’s easier and faster to stay on track than to deviate.

So this week I switched to the Hardgainer Project X. It’s time to put it through its paces and see what it’s really made of.

Now, normally you should never stop a program half way through – you’ll never make progress unless you stick with what you are doing. Flipping programs is one of the biggest reasons people don’t see gains. But as it happened, my previous program was an extension of an older one and the trap tear injury meant that I’d had two weeks out so it was perfect timing to try something new.

On that note, here is a training tip I picked up from a friend of mine who you may have heard of – Vince Delmonte (you can read more about Vince here). If you’ve been doing a workout for a while then your gains are going to start slowing down. One reason for this is that while you’ve grown the muscles you are targeting, the other muscles which you use have not grown as much. Take as an example shrugs which target the traps. It’s not unusual to reach a point where your grip strength isn’t up to the loads that you need to keep improving on the traps. So, take a break in your program, target the forearms for a month, then go back. This time you’ll be able to hold onto the bar or dumbbells long enough to start working those traps. You can do this with almost any exercise.

Back to the Hardgainer program. When you start a new program always drop back on the weight. The first time through is always a case of feeling your way to find the right balances. It might take two or three weeks to work up to the right weight, but that’s OK. Now for me, this program has a lot more volume than I’ve been working with, and it’s very intense. So I’ve dropped back on the weight and not really pushed myself.

I started out with too much weight on the squat, I’ve trimmed it back now and today was much better. Other exercises such as the shrug I was too light, but as a result I know a better weight for next time.

The first day is a long workout, and it took me more than an hour. The others I completed in comfortably less than that. Now I know what I’m doing, I can shave time off and certainly I expect to bring the others down to about forty minutes. That first one I’ll get under the hour, beyond that I’ll have to see.

Got any training tips you’d like to share? Add a comment below, I’d appreciate your thoughts.