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When it comes to one of my biggest passions, bodybuilding/fitness, there seems to be more here than just “pumping iron”.

I would consider bodybuilding as almost an athletic art form that requires a high amount of focus and brain power. Moreover, when I perform workouts, I have intention with each and every exercise; each exercise should serve a purpose, whether that be hypertrophy, blood flow, stability/longevity, or strength training techniques. As a bodybuilder, hypertrophy is my obvious favorite and to enhance this hypertrophic effect in training I use what’s coined “the mind-muscle connection”. This mind-muscle connection is essentially mental practice where I cognitively focus on the muscle that I am going to contract in order to isolate that area better. This triggers neural networks and allows me to have more purposeful and intense movement patterns.

Studies of skill acquisition and mental practice such as those presented in class by Smith et al. 2001 and Yue et al. (2003) showed significant increases in muscle strength utilizing mental practice, but no hypertrophic benefits. While most using this mind-muscle connection are not new to the skill of bodybuilding and are simultaneously claiming hypertrophy, we do in fact see strength increases in academia. Strength increases do correlate to size increases generally and may be a mechanism to support mental practice in my routine. The Neuromuscular Explanation fits best with my anecdotal evidence of using mental practice to induce hypertrophic benefits because the cognition primes my muscles prior to executing the exercise and thus these neural pathways are ready to respond and fire faster. Furthermore, this makes sense because power exercises typically require a great CNS input, in which this imagery can help stimulate. More power means greater potential load, and thus more stimulus to the muscle to induce these benefits.

This is considered an individual difference variable that I think I am proficient at and also one that any successful bodybuilder/powerlifter is expected to be as well. This video gives evidence of current research to suggest my experience of mental imagery and muscular growth.

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How To Use The Mind-Muscle Connection for Growth (What The Science Says)

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Learning how to become a good athlete takes time and intention and this is similar for bodybuilding.

I grew up around my dad and mom always working out and so I always feel like I started my skill acquisition ahead of the curve for bodybuilding. Because working out is one of favorite hobbies, I love to study it and learn what it means to be a professional and the associated characteristics that compose an expert in this field. I have noticed that many of the motor learning characteristics learned in class has develop in me as I transitioned from a novice into a more skilled athlete. Specifically, as I have practiced I have seen the power law of practice come into play where I have learned in a negatively accelerated fashion and this has pushed me to have to explore in depth the many facets of the sport such as dieting in order to keep improving. I have also noticed that the number of muscles involved in my exercises have decreased overtime, in effort to focus all my attention on that muscle I am trying to train. Likewise, the energy efficiency of my workouts has changed in that I really try and conserve all I can for every exercise and structure programs to attenuate this strategy.

The transition from a novice to an expert has altered other characteristics such as my visual attention. This has transitioned from being more ambient to focusing on only the necessary body part being exercised. Also, my kinematic goals have changed from spatial and just trying to complete the movement to temporal goals and getting the best contraction output. Finally, I have observed that my error detection in my exercises relies more on my proprioceptive knowledge than my visual feedback now and thus gives me quicker corrections. All of these characteristics follow that of an expert of a skill. This image shows a professional utilizing muscle efficiency, visual focus and a temporal kinematic goal.

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Wrestling practice and the sport as a whole has to be the hardest athletic endeavor I have dealt with in my life.

Without variability in my practices, I feel like I wouldn’t be the wrestler I am and would’ve burnt out on it due to the physical and mental expenditure. Variability came in many ways, from variability in practice schedules, drills, partners, and intensity. Wrestling is a long season and so the practice distribution was spread out over a longer range, this allowed for more days of rest and recovery in between hard practice sessions and hence better performances. Because the sport of wrestling at a high level incorporates a lot of body awareness, it was more of a procedural skill than a declarative skill and thus the overlearning that may have happened during the season ultimately lead to better retention of my abilities.

Intensity is a huge factor in an elite wrestler, and so my coach often incorporated many days of “red flag” practices, where there was almost non-stop movement and live wrestling. While these red flag practices weren’t everyday, my coach knew to include intensity variability throughout the week to have the best recovery and conditioning. Finally, during drills, my coaches include intertrial variability such as changing the types of takedowns, partners, and situations that I was presented with. This variability led me to be a superior wrestler and perform better because I knew how to react to various positions, do multiple takedowns effectively, and understand how to react to different partners. If I were to have the same practice schedule, partners, intensity, and drills day-in and day-out, I would either be burnt-out or not have the same set of skills that make me a better wrestler. This is ultimately why practice doesn’t make perfect, but perfect practice makes a wholesome wrestler. This image shows a practice scenario that a coach may put a wrestler in to incorporate variability.

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In high school, I was that guy…yeah, the best ping pong player in the room.

Table tennis was not one of those motor skills that came easily but took a lot of time and practice. Ping pong requires more fine arm movements that correlate to accurate, but quick hits. Most of my practice came in study hall, where we had a ping pong table available, or at home, where I convinced my parents to buy one. With my ping pong skills getting more serious coming into college I had a chip on my shoulder. This did not last long, as my 70-year-old grandpa challenged me to a game of racquetball. Despite my grandpa being one of the best players in our area, I was confident that I would learn the techniques quickly and my ping pong skills would transfer over nicely…I was wrong.

The transition from table tennis to racquetball was actually drastically different and thus I experienced negative transfer. While it appeared that they both had similar observable movement characteristics, racquetball requires much more backhand shots as well as much more agility whole-body movements combined with these racquet skills. Additionally, the strategic elements of the games were drastically different corresponding to alternative cognitive processing occurring. This is evidence following the Transfer Appropriate Processing Theory (Lee, 1988), but this example leading to a negative transfer. This may be due to the difference in degree of similarity for the tactics for the two sports. Finally, another thing that was not helping me was that the force patterns were not correlating well and so elaborated automatisms were inadequate in this scenario. Let’s just say my ping pong skills have yet to transfer appropriately to racquetball and so my grandpa doesn’t even have to move on the court to beat me. This image is representative of the negative transfer between the two skills, despite looking similar.

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While augmented feedback can be disheartening, but it is essential to learning especially in wrestling.

In a wrestling there are several sources of augmented feedback including the scoreboard with time and points, the coach, and the fans. When I was younger and wrestling, my dad’s augmented feedback during the match actually hindered me and got in my head. This caused to focus too much on my declarative memory and sometimes caused me to choke in situations that I should not have. This corresponds to the differences between young and older athletes and how feedback should be given. Despite some hinderance, I believe that augmented feedback was essential in my performances. Specifically, feedback after my matches was superior to feedback during my performances and I was able to learn what I did wrong, which was a more effective strategy for improving. Knowledge of performance came in many ways including coaches giving descriptive verbal feedback as well as watching video of old matches after practice with my coaches. Knowledge of results came in the form of the score board and time and this wasn’t as useful to me in learning skills of wrestling, but was an essential part of the match. Terminal augmented feedback  was much more useful to me than concurrent feedback because it was hard to make corrections during a 6-minute match and for them to be effective.

Overall, my head coach was efficacious because he provided me both information of what I did right and wrong, used verbal and video knowledge of performance, provided more terminal feedback than concurrent, and reduced his frequency as appropriate. Although it was hard for me to accept some of the augmented feedback in wrestling early on in my career due to confidence issues, I learned that a successful wrestler took the feedback as a learning opportunity and way to become better. This comedic image shows the coaches who are so into the match that they are actually giving augmented feedback by showing the right positioning using their own bodies. This is typical of a wrestling coaches feedback.