You’ve all seen the folks at the gym reading a magazine or book while training on the treadmill, bike or elliptical. Training time seems to have turned into tune-out time! When exercise becomes a mindless activity, you’re actually robbing yourself of your best results. Fitness and health experts agree that putting your mind into the exercise you are doing delivers better results. So when we at Oxygen tell you to toss the reading materials aside to concentrate on the job at hand, we mean it!
Here’s how you can do it. If, for example, you are performing Roman chair leg raises for your abdominals, you need to concentrate on what you are doing to get the best results. Support your upper body by resting your forearms on the armrests. Place your back firmly against the backrest and suspend yourself so your legs hang straight down. Concentrate on contracting your entire abdominal region while you raise your legs smoothly and with control. Maintaining focus on a deliberate raising and lowering motion discourages the temptation to merely swing the legs up and down – you won’t feel the same contraction and won’t get abdominal definition otherwise. You also risk injury.
Any time you feel your mind is wandering during an exercise, pull it back by thinking about the muscle and the work it is doing. It even helps to place your hand on the muscle you are exercising, if possible, to feel it working and to emphasize the effort.
In my experience, putting my mind into the muscle ensures an honest workout. I like to imagine the muscle I am training and picture it getting stronger, fuller and more cut with each repetition and progressive set. In training, as with everything else, attention to detail makes the difference between ordinary and extraordinary.
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