We talk a lot here about mind-muscle connection and we do so for good reason. It just isn’t enough to lift the weights. We need to focus on every single motion. People talk about the sword becoming an extension of the arm (in movies at least). We need to understand that the body is just the physical extension of the mind. You will never reach your full potential lifting if you do not
Whatever trick you need to do, keep your mind with your muscles at all times
have a tight connection between your mind and your muscles.
Today was my leg day. I start my leg day with a pyramid of back squats. Really blow the body up with that before moving into all isolation moves. After my first, and longest, set of squats, I knew something wasn’t clicking. I made all the lifts. My form was on point. The weight felt ok. I was getting lower than parallel. Still, something was wrong. Maybe it was that I wasn’t fully awake. Maybe it was the fatigue of pushing on super low carbs, but for some reason I just couldn’t that that mind muscle connection to fire properly. So I sat down. Instead of tossing more weight on the bar and getting ready for
Forget the world outside.
my next set I decided to take a walk around the gym and think this out.
While walking around the gym (lil Wayne blasting) I had an idea. Why am I wearing headphones? To block out the noise. Why am I wearing a hood? To block out peripheral vision. Why do I keep blocking stuff out? Because the less distraction around me the more my mind connects to the muscle. So why stop at
Don’t laugh. Lil Wayne’s trainer is Kai Greene.
the music and the hood.
When I returned to the squat rack I took two towels and tied them together and then tied them around my head as a blindfold. Music blaring, hood up, blindfolded I found my way to the rack. I did the 12 best squats of my life. My core was so cued in it was insane. I felt every single muscle. I knew exactly what I was doing. It was really amazing. After reracking I pulled the hood off and felt the world come back into focus. Light. Movement. People. It was terrible. So I dropped some more weight on the bar, put my homemade blindfold back on, pulled up my hood and banged out my next set.
The feeling of doing my squats blindfolded was amazing. My whole body was shaking. I felt the kind of awake that you only get if you are a meme who had too much preworkout. Moving on to my isolation work I used the blindfold the whole time. Leg Extensions, Laying Leg Curls, Butt Blaster, Calf Extensions, Leg Press, Hanging Leg Raises, Planks and more, all blindfolded. It was absolutely an interesting day at the gym.
Always trust Yoda.
I won’t go as far as to say that you should be blindfolded whenever you work out, but I will say that if you feel that you are not keying into your lifts you should give it a try. Of course, speaking of giving it a try, since it is Friday welcome to your WB Weekend Challenge.
This weekend I want you guys to do a full body workout totally blindfolded. The workout will be in three parts with a compound movement followed by back up isolation work to the next compound movement.
WB Weekend Challenge: Blindfold Edition
Back Squat 3×10
Leg Extension 3×15
Leg Press 3×15
Deadlift 3×10
Laying Leg Curl 3×15
Butt Blaster 3×15
Barbell Bench Press 3×10
Chest Flyes 3×15
Dumbbell Pullover 3×15
3 Sets Barbell 21’s
3 sets push-up to failure
You want each of these lifts to be keyed into a weight that is roughly a 9 RPE. I don’t want you to go to absolute failure or even be iffy about it, but at the same time I want you to get pretty close. In an ideal situation, the weight you will be using will be such that you could get one more lift for sure but probably not another after that. This gives you a little left in the tank to rerack the weights with the blindfold on.
A few things will surprise you. I debated telling you to look out for them, but I decided to let you find out on your own. Enjoy and please let me know what you think when you are done.
Enjoy the weekend and grind on! It is March. Soon spring will be here and we are gonna wanna enjoy them gainz!