When Olympic athletes win gold medals and professional athletes win world titles, they often describe accessing a flow state; some sports psychologists call it being in the zone. Again, time slows down, the goal looks 10 times bigger than it really is, there’s a peaceful calm in the midst of an intense action and winning feels inevitable, natural and easy. This altered flow state has also been described by the world’s top performing business professionals.
All around the world people who get the best results in their particular area of life and business have described their ability to get themselves in the zone and access this powerful flow state.
In Mark Divine’s “Unbeatable Mind” program he refers to his definition for extreme mental
toughness as training your mind to the point where you’re able to access this flow state on demand. In this powerful flow state, you experience 100% courage and confidence. There’s zero fear in that state. There are no doubts and the idea of failure never enters your mind. In this flow state, your laser focus on your goals is completely unshakable and you naturally use all of your talents and skills at the absolute peak of your potential. It’s no exaggeration to say that in this state, you can tap into levels of performance and potential that are 20 times greater than your current reality. We call this your 20X factor. And here’s the best way in the world to unlock it. This is our proven Unbeatable 20X System.
Another way of describing mental toughness is psychological resilience. My definition of psychological resilience is the ability to become aware of when and why you are thrown out balance physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually and bounce back to balance.
These are skills that we will be working on in more detail during our “Master Warrior Training”
These same skills can be developed, integrated, and utilized in your High Effort Strength Training sessions and carried over to your life in general. Here is how this process can be applied to performing a set of Leg Press utilizing a 10/10 protocol and training to True Muscular Failure (MMF).
Let’s explore further what I mean by “True” MMF and how it looks in practice. Here’s an example of performing a set of 4 SuperSlow reps on the Medx Leg Press machine to reach MMF:
Before starting your exercise, I encourage you to prepare yourself mentally.
One my clients shared an AHA moment with me in that he made a shift to thinking of himself as “technician” while training. In other words, he began to better understand and embrace what I have been encouraging you consider. Focus on the process and internalization of the exercise. Trust the process.
He said this approach reduced his anxiety surrounded his training while not diminishing his results or effort. It instead helped him improve both.
Here is what it looks like to be a “technician.’
- Before you start, visualize yourself setting the intention to give your best and most focused effort.
- Imagine your consciousness as liquid seeping into every cell in your body.
- Focus on connecting the mind, body, and spirit as one.
- Put your attention on staying calm, controlling your breath, and connecting the target muscles with the movement.
- Picture your body in the proper position: feet parallel, knees flexed at 90 degrees, hips firmly pressed into the seat back, head and neck neutral.
- Imagine building tension and pressing through the ball, outside, and heel of your foot as if your feet were sinking into and through the platform. Do this until the weight stack begins to move slightly.
- Feel in total control of the movement, engaging your glutes, quadriceps, and hamstrings, and activating your core to stabilize your pelvis.
- As you reach the end of the range of motion, stay in control and maintain tension, then slowly start the descent. Gradually slow down even more, anticipating the start of the next rep as slowly as possible. Visualize this process for the first 3 reps, focusing on feeling your muscles engage. Embrace the burning sensation and shift your focus towards it instead of avoiding discomfort.
- Remind yourself that this feeling is a positive sign of progress. As you begin the last rep, give it your all. Imagine barely moving the weight, even if doubt creeps in about finishing the rep. Stay focused on the process, remaining calm and engaged.
- Become aware of where you have the urge to speed up where the exercise is more challenging and slow down where the exercise is less challenging. During the performance of the leg press, the tendency will be to speed up during the lower turn around and slow down or pause at the end range. Resist this urge to seek comfort and therefore diminish the exercise stimulus.
- As you begin the last rep, give it your all. Imagine barely moving the weight, even if doubt creeps in about finishing the rep. Stay focused on the process, remaining calm and engaged.
- When it feels like the weight won’t budge any further, increase your effort without speeding up. Push yourself to maintain an extremely slow speed to keep the weight moving. By this point, you’re nearing the end of the perfect set, barely completing the positive phase of the exercise.
- Now, concentrate on finishing the perfect rep by controlling the negative phase for 10 seconds. If you can control the descent, attempt to start the next rep. Remember, whether or not you can complete the rep doesn’t matter. The key is to stay fully engaged mentally and physically, with the intention to remain engaged regardless of whether the weight moves or not. Maintain this intention for another 5-10 seconds.
Regarding the above description, I’d like to provide some feedback to guide you on your journey to MMF. As the movement of the weight slows or bogs down, you’ll need to increase your effort to maintain a continuous movement. In the beginning of a SuperSlow set, you intentionally conserve your effort to move at a slow speed. However, as the set progresses and your muscles fatigue, your effort must increase. If increasing your effort causes the weight to move rapidly, it indicates that you’re not as fatigued as you thought. Use this feedback to realize that you can push further before the need to try moving faster arises.
A few other insights that can help you in this process:
1. Remember that as you get closer to MMF that you are gradually weakening the target muscles and thereby reducing your capacity to create force. Therefore, as you near the end of your set, the set becomes safer. This is true if you have the discipline and focus to maintain proper focus and technique as the set requires more effort. Most often an injury occurs at the end of a set due to a breakdown in form and technique.
2. Focus on the breath without over breathing and forcefully breathing. As you near failure even imagine that your controlled breath is fueling the engine of your contracting muscles.
3. Focus on directing your energy into the target muscles and to a lesser extent the muscles needed to stabilize for the movement. Diminish excessive tension, gripping and grimacing that simply take away from this focused effort. These habits may make it appear that you are training hard but are not the best use of energy and will not lead to a flow draw. They are more akin to pressing the gas while having the brake on.
I hope this information gives you a new perscpective on how to approach your training. I encourage you to open your mind to possiblity.