Natural Bodybuilding, Fitness, and Peak Performance

What’s revealed by the mysterious ‘Index Finger Spot’

When I was in my teens and twenties, I did a lot of bench pressing. In other words, I was no different than most guys in that age bracket that have a one-dimensional fascination with this single power lifting movement. I seemed to have this instinctive belief that the more I could maximally press on this one upper body lift, the better I could ‘handle myself’ in any given physical situation. Of course, to get the maximum out of bench pressing, one needs to occasionally solicit the assistance of a spotter. Those final couple of reps in a 6-rep set or that uppermost poundage for a one-rep maximum are done much more safely and effectively with that nearly ubiquitous second person standing over the bar at the head of the bench. Just a slight nudge of assistance from above can get a bench presser past that invisible yet nasty sticking point that resides about halfway through the movement.

But what should we make of the occasional faked assistance? I’m sure that nearly everyone who has bench-pressed with regularity has experienced this. You’ve been cranking out the first few reps and you’re on those last couple that can make all the difference when – bam… you hit that sticking point. Your insightful spotter, however, realizes that you really have it in you to get that next repetition on your own: so what does he or she do? They stick their index finger under the bar and tap it with an upward motion – all the while giving you shouts of encouragement. Suddenly, seeing the "help" you’re getting from your "spotter", you push the weight right through that "sticking point" as if it existed only in your mind. Given that your spotter didn’t take any of the weight load away, a fractionally acknowledged awareness comes over you that says it was simply ‘all in your head’.

What does this say about human performance and potential? Doesn’t it cause you to wonder how many times in life you’re ‘stuck’, struggling with the ‘weight’ half-way off your chest and being held there by a ‘sticking point’ that’s really only an illusion of your subconscious mind? How many illusionary sticking points do you hit in your performance within other contexts? Do our limiting beliefs within specific performances affect our overall beliefs about our capabilities? What was revealed to me by the mysterious ‘index finger spot’ is what first gave me interest in how much of physique development, and performance in general, is a product of our innermost mind.

Here’s the key point: Either we deliberately create and embed empowering programs for our subconscious minds or they get created and embedded for us by default. Think about that the next time someone gives you only the illusion of assistance in the gym – and you smash through a sticking point that you realize, in hindsight, was only imagined.

"Dig in Your Heels" if you want Better Thighs

I had really skinny legs as a kid. They were so much of the bird variety that I received undeserved ridicule about them from my sister. Of course, I didn’t know until far into our respective adulthood lives that she was merely jealous of my skinny legs. Even hearing this eventual admission from her didn’t erase the complex I’d developed over my leg size (or rather – lack thereof). ‘Self-conscious’ would be an understatement in describing how I felt when I walked outside in a pair of shorts for much of my younger life.

That’s all different now. At 42 years old, I get compliments on my ‘wheels’ (gym-speak for legs). They’re thick and muscular and possess a nice outer ‘sweep’ to them. They’re also improving faster now than they ever have before. This is more of an accomplishment when you consider that I’ve done this stuff naturally from the start – I’ve never used any kind of bodybuilding drugs – and my genetics for building muscle size are about average at best.

One of the secrets I’ve learned for building that ‘outer sweep’ I just mentioned is to ‘get off your toes’ and ‘get on your heals’. When you do a leg press exercise, for example, being flat-footed or putting the pressure near your toes will work your hips and glutes. But lifting your toes off the platform and pushing from your heals will do wonders for working your front quadriceps muscles. I’m not saying you shouldn’t work your hips and glutes also – you most certainly should. However, isolating those front quad muscles will cause your legs to look better from the front.

Now, if you really want to work on your ‘thigh sweep’, then lay on a horizontal leg press machine, bring your feet together so your shoes are touching each other, and lift your toes up so you push from your heals. This will isolate the outer front quadriceps muscles better than anything else.

If you follow that or precede it with a wide stance and your feet pointed outward (isolating your inner thighs) you could have one helluva set of wheels on you before you know it.

Half-Reps for Bigger ‘Guns’

What guy doesn’t want to have a bigger set of upper arms hanging at his sides? The arms stand as so much the symbol of musculature that when a child asks you to flex your muscle, it’s universally expected that you should pull up your shirtsleeve and hinge at the elbow to produce some noticeable biceps contour. Of course, the endlessly repeated nature of these requests can be a good reason to wear long sleeve shirts when attending house parties in which your hosts never put their kids to bed.

Anyway, let’s agree that upper-arm size is a much-sought-after possession – not only for cosmetic purposes, but athletic one’s as well. Strength and power in this area can help performance in nearly every sport – with the exception of maybe… uh… soccer. But what the hell – you can sure look more impressive on the soccer field with a big set of guns.

My younger days of working out with weights were plagued with disappointing upper arm development. If you look at my before picture on my web site at www.hardbodysuccess.com, you’ll see that I resembled the Pillsbury Doughboy more than anything else – and my upper arms were no exception to the rest of my physique. I was in a relaxed pose when the picture was taken. Things wouldn’t have improved much, however, if I had flexed for that ‘before shot’. I might have gained a whole 16th of an inch in arm size if I’d bothered to expend the energy (which was, sadly, a lot of energy for me back then).

One thing I’ve noticed lately is how well the arm muscles (both biceps and triceps) respond positively to half-repetition sets. When I combine a ‘half-rep set strategy’ – whether for myself or for clients – with the other unique muscle building strategies outlined in my book, arm development becomes steady and impressive. This has been reflected by the current state of my own upper arms, which have been (tossing modesty aside) straining the seams of my shirts.

What I’ve been doing is simply splitting, say, the full repetition of an arm curling exercise into two exercises – one for the bottom half of the range of motion and one for the top half. This has been especially effective for biceps development, for which I work the "belly" of the biceps with a seated pulley rowing machine. On that particular machine, I lay down on the low bench and curl the pulley-weighted bar (the pulley running horizontally to the floor) from my hips up to the level of the bottom of my ribcage. This applies all the tension to the bottom half of a biceps curling movement.

I follow this up by using a pulley-connected bar with a preacher curl bench. If I back the preacher bench a few feet away from the pulley protruding at the floor, I can create all the biceps tension at the top of the curl movement. This is accomplished by only performing the movement from the mid-point of the curl to the point where I touch the bar to my chin. By doing this, I hit the peak of the biceps. Splitting my biceps curls into two half-range movements like this has worked wonders for my arm development.

The same goes for triceps movements. There’s a triceps extension machine at my gym that really isolates that muscle. I start off by doing the exercise from the top of the range of motion to the mid-point. When I’ve reached my targeted volume on that half of the movement, then I go from the mid-point to the fully extended one.

These modifications, added to an already effective arm routine, have given me arm development that I’d once only wished for. Better yet, I’m getting it while spending minimal amounts of my precious time working out.

Smashing Through Procrastination and Sustaining Motivation

Do you utilize the two drivers of motivation effectively?

One of them is only ideal for moving a person from a ‘stuck state’ in to one of action.

The other is the best choice for sustaining momentum and reaching personal goals.

When the two are converged in proper ratio and combined with good timing, they can compel a person in to unstoppable enthusiasm and nearly incessant action.

I once read about a study done at Cornell University a few years ago. I guess some …uh… people who do studies there came upon some interesting findings while interviewing elderly people. They found that well over three quarters of people in their twilight years of life come upon an insightful revelation when reflecting backward: They don’t regret the things they tried and were embarrassed by "failing at". Instead, the majority regrets never having attempted the things they wanted to do – out of fear of failure or fear of the unknown. Apparently, when we know this gig is almost over, we realize that most of our fears were just phantoms that might have been robbing us of life.

If you really project forward in your mind and imagine having that revelation some day – what does the thought do to you? If it affects you the way it affects me, then you probably feel an uneasiness that can be converted to the catalyst that produces desire to make today an action-packed one filled with fun and productivity. I’m disturbed by the thought of reaching the end of my life and feeling that I didn’t live fully – that I wasn’t completely ALIVE while being here. That realization applies whether my demise comes decades from now or is only minutes away.

In the field of NLP, projecting oneself into a possible future negative state in order to catalyze action in the present is referred to as ‘The Dickens Pattern’ (Modeled after Charles Dickens). It’s rarely used in that field anymore because – although powerful as a procrastination buster – it doesn’t produce the ideal internal representation for us to hold in our heads for long-term motivation and success. Those outcomes require positive I.R.s (thoughts) that are subconsciously habituated and transformed into positive and consistent actions. Put differently, a possible negative future event that we fully associate into (see from our own eyes) can get us out of procrastination, but that picture needs to be changed to a positive one with a positive self-image for motivation to be sustainable.