Mentally Challenged!

Peter Chown

We feared it was going to happen; we knew it was coming; the signs were there, and finally it has. Chown has gone Mental. If you wanna get big fast, or if your results are not what you hoped for - maybe you should go mental too...

This article is about your mindset with regard to training. I see it all the time in the gym, guys who have been training years, training hard, lifting heavy but one thing stays the same-their physique! They don’t actually have much of one. But why? The way they train they should be huge, or at least looking pretty good! You talk with them and they train well and eat well so something is missing. Yep they haven’t trained their brain. Right, I’m no qualified expert in this field but am going by what I have learnt and observed in the gym.

When some people train you can see all they are thinking about is moving the weight from A to B, lifting as heavily as possible. Nothing else. They aren’t thinking about the muscle they are training, the feel of the contraction, what they want the muscle to look like, just moving the weight up and down. Now, you look at a top competitive bodybuilder and look at the way they train. Look at their eyes, facial expression etc. They are 110% focused on each rep, focused on the contraction, visualising what they want the muscle to look like, they have no idea what is going on around them, they are in 'The Zone', almost trance like, making muscle grow with their mind not just the physical hard work. I know it sounds nuts but it does work...

A good example is myself. I’ve suffered injuries over the last few years where it got to the point that all my motivation went (happens to all of us at some point!). All that I did hurt and never seemed to get anywhere, mentally I wasn’t with it. When the pain had gone I started to train hard to gain back the muscle that I had lost and to lose the fat I had gained. When I had time off in the past due to an injury the muscle came back very fast, but not this time. I put on a couple of pounds but nothing really seemed to happen which was weird. What was wrong? Was I past it, finished, washed up? I’m in my late thirties now and this is a time in natural bodybuilding that you should be reaching your potential. It must have been something else. Thinking about it, every workout I was just being like the suspects I mentioned at the beginning. I wasn’t focused, thinking about what I was doing, I was training because I felt like I had to as that’s what I do right? I was lifting heavy but nothing happened. It was my mentality towards the training that was all wrong!

So, I had some time off training to try to refocus.

I started training again, found myself a great training partner in Big Kev, eating and supplementation was bang on and my focus had come back. Every workout I visualised my muscle growing like a weed, being bigger than I ever had been before. The contraction in my muscles were unreal, I could ‘see’ every muscle fibre contracting, the pumps I were getting were skin bursting. My clothes were filling out at a very fast rate. The fat was coming off too so I was getting leaner and eating a lot more food. I weighed 16st 5lbs before I started training again and not in the best of shape, after 8-10 weeks my weight had shot up to 17st 8lbs, the heaviest I had ever been and with a good few pounds of fat gone too! The only difference from before was my mental attitude.

I was very positive to my goals, I switched on my visualisation skills, thought about everything I had done in the gym, I used my mind to grow as well as all the hard work.

Ok, this isn’t something that you can do straight away. It takes time to train your mental side, sometimes years. But it is a great training technique, up there with the lifting of the weights. They go together like hand and glove for great results. To start learning yourself, next time you train, drop your poundage a fair bit on your exercises. Start to really feel the muscle work, get your mind right there in the muscle you are working, start to ‘see’ the fibres contracting, visualise the muscle as much bigger than it is. If you look up to a bodybuilder, say Jay Cutler and you want those massive delts, next time you train shoulders, visualise thosedelts on your body and the same with your other bodyparts. Think your muscles big and getting bigger. Trust me it works!!!

About the Author

Peter Chown is a natural bodybuilding champ and always worth listening to. 2006 INBA Natural Mr Universe and 2005 INBF World Heavyweight Champ – and one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. He is huge, muscular, ripped and strong and does not inject steroids into his ass, his arm or his eyeballs. He just works damn hard and eats right. He will not get all fancy and technical; he is just here to tell us what to do and how to do it. He knows what works. We like this.