How to strengthen the mind-muscle connection

The mind-muscle connection refers to the close connection between the brain and body. This connection is thanks to the central nervous system, which allows the brain and muscles to send signals to each other.

Focusing on your mind-muscle connection during exercise is a strategy used to enhance your workouts, particularly during strength training. By mentally targeting each muscle as we perform an exercise we are seeking to improve the quality of our movement and the intensity of our muscle contraction.

How to strengthen the mind-muscle connection

Here are some top tips for improving your mind-muscle connection, particularly through regular resistance training practice.

Visualize your muscles when you’re trying to lift weights, contract your muscles, or hold a yoga position. Imagine the muscle tightening and then relaxing. You can practice this even when you’re sitting down at home, as doing so can translate into better gym performance when you are actually contracting and relaxing your muscles.

Control your muscle movements and contractions with every exercise that you perform. For example, if you’re performing a bicep curl, raise and lower the barbell or dumbbells under control with every repetition.

Isolate each muscle separately to enable you to focus properly on the connection to these muscles one by one. A great way to do this is to contract your muscles separately when you’re sitting down in a chair. For example, contract each glute, then each quad, then each calf to improve your mind-muscle connection to your lower body muscles.

You can also perform isolation exercises in the gym to strengthen the unique connection that you have between your brain and each skeletal muscle in your body.