At my facility, we get to train a wide range of individuals from the highly athletic to the true beginners. While they may have different goals and different backgrounds, we're still responsible for training them to the best of our abilities.
One thing I've found to be fairly common among many of our clients is the lack of proprioception. For anyone who doesn’t know what proprioception is, it is the awareness one has of one's own body in regards to both positioning and effort being applied. It is the ability to tell what your body is doing while performing a movement or task. I have found that while many people have relative decent proprioception, even some advanced athletes have trouble truly focusing in and activating muscles correctly during high intensity, high speed, or highly fatiguing movements. For example, I've had athletes who had trouble maintaining lat tightness while performing heavy bench presses, athletes who didn't realize that they were bending their arms early in a clean or snatch, and athletes who failed to fully flex their triceps during a max rep set of rope press-downs. Once a person develops a good mind-muscle connection, he usually doesn't have any trouble maintaining that connection during a movement. However, the trick is developing that connection in the first place. Here are three methods that we've had success with:
1. Suggestive talk
Some individuals are better at auditory learning and seem to respond well to this method. As a coach or trainer, we will talk to the client as if we were the client telling his body what it should be doing. Instead of speaking to the client using the words “you” and “your,” I'll use the terms “I” or “we.” I’ll tell the client, “OK, now we’re going to pull our shoulders back into the bench and then lock them down toward our hips.”
I'll constantly reaffirm that the client “feels” what it is he is supposed to be doing. I’ll ask, “Do you feel your lats engaged?” Then I’ll repeat that “we’re going to keep them engaged and keep our shoulders back and down throughout the entire bench press.” I'm constantly trying to reinforce that the client needs to be aware and feel what is going on and not lose that awareness once it's established.
This method is relatively effective but seems to be somewhat limited in its effectiveness when dealing with people who don’t have an athletic background or at least some lifting experience. If suggestive talk doesn’t do the trick alone, we’ll implement our next strategy.
2. Proprioceptive touch
Many times all that is needed to help build some better awareness is a little bit of proprioceptive touch. I'm sure this is what Harry Selkow is doing when he slaps everyone on the ass. He's just trying to increase their glute activation. Truthfully though, creating some nervous system communication is a great way to help clients know when something is flexing fully or not. Activating different sensory neurons by pressing on the muscle that you're trying to activate helps the client become aware of the different pressure changes between what a fully flexed muscle feels like versus a partially or non-activated muscle. Once the client is aware of this difference, she can learn to create maximal tension more easily and more steadily.
Combined with the suggestive talk, this is usually enough to get most clients activating their muscles correctly. However, if they're still having trouble, we have another trick up our sleeves.
3. Activation supersets
A final means of helping our clients develop a better mind-muscle connection and activate properly is to have them do a movement that forces them to properly activate the targeted muscle prior to whatever lift they are having trouble completing. For example, if a client is having trouble properly activating his lats on the bench, I would have him stand in the “touchdown” position. I would place my hands under his upper arm while telling him to drive his elbows down toward his sides. To complete this task, he must activate his lats. Combining this with some quality suggestive talk, the client gains a better feeling for what an activated lat feels like.
When doing these exercises, I'll only have my clients do a limited number of reps (usually three) and I'll have them pause for a one or two count. The goal is to teach them to activate correctly, not fatigue the muscles. Once they’ve completed their activation movement, we’ll have them go directly into the main movement and use some proprioceptive touch and suggestive talk to get the desired effect. Thus far, this has proven to be highly effective at developing the mind-muscle connection necessary to perform efficiently.
Whether you're a powerlifter, bodybuilder, athlete, gym rat, coach, or personal trainer, these methods can help you in your own training as well as help you with any clients you may work with. Every person is different, so you have to be a little creative and have some imagination when trying to develop the best game plan possible. Using suggestive talk, proprioceptive touch, and activation supersets has helped everyone at NBS Fitness develop a better mind-muscle connection and improve everyone’s proprioception.