What the Heck do I mean by that?
Half the people swear that Mind/Muscle Connection is a thing. Though in the most literal sense, if you successfully move a weight (say, you press a load over your head), then you already HAVE a mind-muscle connection. Does that make sense? If you MOVED the weight, then your mind-muscle connection is functioning correctly.
But you have a camp of people that insist you get more benefit from feeeeling the muscle fire.
Like really focusing on the sensation of the movement, rather than just moving it in the prescribed manner. (What do I mean by 'prescribed manner'? I mean not mindlessly swinging the weight, but using the correct tempo of concentric vs. eccentric). But if you're spending one second up, somewhat explosively, and using a controlled 2-3 second descent, or whatever, it really doesn't matter where your head is at during the repetition. The Mind is "connected" in both cases!
If the same time-under-tension is being applied rep-per-rep in each approach ("fiber-focused" versus "just-move-the-weight"), then what benefit does greater attention to the firing pattern confer? Does the practitioner of weight-moving realize any additional degree of adaptation from subjectively experiencing the contraction?
No. I want to say no. (Caveat: I should have opened with "I'm 50/50 on the MMC thing"). But I want to say "NO", there's no added benefit. If the weight you're lifting is going up over time, and an appropriate volume of challenging stimulus is being applied progressively, size & strength will improve completely independent of your mental locus.
So I want to propose an alteration to the definition of MMC. (This is in the same vein that "Time Under Tension" is often mis-applied, to mistakenly mean "the speed of the reps" rather than "total time under the bar"). The Mind/Muscle-Connection ought to be understood to mean "The mind getting better at directing the muscle", rather than "The muscle gets better at speaking to the mind".
Is that somewhat clear? The Mind is in the Driver's seat, baby. The mind is the Force and the AGENT which pulls the puppet-strings of tendon and flesh. The brain is not a meek observer, looking & listening for instruction from the muscle and the load itself. Of course, it's aware of the feedback coming from the bar through the hands, and up the spine. That goes without saying.
But it's the MIND itself which is pushing the muscles to go where they will. The muscles themselves will lie to you. They're sneaky. The musculature, like the appetite, will often fabricate a narrative of its own agenda. Such as "You've already done enough; you really should just listen to your body." or "Why do one more rep? You're good". (I'm not encouraging poor technique, I'm just saying don't give up easy).
See, MMC is a close relative of that bastard child, "Perfect Form". P/F is the voice that tells you 12 clean, perfect reps with even tempo and no form-breakdown is somehow superior to 12 reps where the first 9 are solid, the next two slow down, and the last one is a total grinder. This is balderdash. If you never see form breakdown, if you always have more than 5 reps in reserve, you might not really be doing challenging work. In this same way, MMC often tricks lifters into going too slow, with too light a load.
If you want to improve Mind/Muscle-Connection, work on pushing past your self-imposed limitations.
If you've never done a set of 20 squats, start there. Observe safe proper technique, of course.
But learning to PUSH further past the point you would normally tap out?
That's what it means to improve your MMC.
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