 First question is from Dan Pei or sorry from Dean Pei How can you get a better mind muscle connection? Mm-hmm? Yeah? Well great your Wi-Fi. Yeah Boom you get the dad jokes coming. I know Five months. I've been practicing. Oh, you know sleeping on that one. I just reminded me of because we're missing this Doug I took a picture of it. I haven't said it to you yet We're hanging out with Chase and Josiah Chase bought a Road road. No, no, no, no, right a road amazing mixer. Yes, that is like easy to use Sounds better than the one we have and really yes, and it's got buttons that do things like applause and Laugh and the dude. Yeah, that's what maybe think of that. That's right. Sorry. You wanted that. I'll check that out No, we I'm sick. It's Doug for sure. It's good. Yeah, we need that. We needed that for the joke you gave Yeah, so mind muscle connection Why would you even want to search for this and what is it? So the mind and muscle connection is your ability to really feel The muscle that you're trying to work to really Contract it and extend it through full range of motion with exercise It's like doing, you know, it's like doing a barbell row for your back But and you feel it in the back muscles not just when you're sore the next day I think people confuse mind muscle connection and think oh, yeah I get sore in those muscles the day after no, that's not what I'm talking about What I'm talking about is while you're doing the exercise do you really feel in the fullest sense the muscles that you're targeting and that you're working I actually think this is where there's a lot of value to practicing flexing totally. I mean that totally That's all it is right So if you if you have the ability to to flex and and feel a certain Muscle on your body with no resistance in weight. You've got a good mind muscle connection It's it's easy. I mean if you put weight on somebody's back and tell them to squat down a hundred times You'll feel it in your muscles for sure whether you feel it that day or the next day you're absolutely gonna feel it So that's not necessarily a great mind muscle connection just because you feel it there The the idea is that you have that kind of control what's cool about this is as you start to to work on it and develop it You can really change how and how effective an exercise is in particular for what it's designed for for example like so you can really Just think about activating the muscle that you want to work in a moment and I'll use an example like a seated row seated row we know is a You know a dominant back exercise But you can by flaring your elbows and really concentrating on your rear delts You can and letting your shoulders roll forward boy You can really put a lot of emphasis on the rear delts, but to the average eye that's watching you do the movement They may not even be able to tell that much of a difference in the exercise, but you can really put Change the emphasis on where you feel it. Yeah, I can make them pecs dance You know I mean boom boom boom boom boom. I'm doing say I did the side effects dog when we get the thing Then you'll be able to do that. I mean, yeah It's like doing a squat and being able to feel it more my glutes or doing a squat and being able to feel it more My quads with little change in form simply by with my mind I'm able to connect to and and emphasize Particular muscles. This is an important thing that you should learn with resistance training because this is what's gonna allow you to Sculpt and shape your body as you see fit and when you first start working out as a beginner Your mind and muscle connection is so bad that even The most basic exercises you don't feel in the target muscles like I would always laugh it when When I first had first started training I have clients do a tricep press down They tell me things like I feel this in my in my abs or I feel this on my back. Yeah, huh? Bizarre it's a tricep press down. We're talking about Plus I think too like in terms of the overall function of it like you can adjust on the fly too And I know I brought this up on a different podcast We did before but when you are lifting weights to be able to have access to specific muscles That will help you to resist forces is another Attribute, you know that that you'll benefit from with your performance Not just to be able to flex and you know be able to create a better pump But also to be able to you know resist these forces and have better performance We just talked about this so if you if whoever asked this question if you haven't Listened to last week's episode where we talked about the benefits of body building a body building This is one of them and one of the things that there's a lot of emphasis in a body building program is Isolation type exercise so this is where this is where you can work on that and when you do isolation exercises to work on the Mind muscle connection weight becomes arbitrary. It doesn't matter how much weight you're doing In fact, you should do something really light and slow it down Focus on the tempo focus on the squeeze and being connected to it The mistake I think a lot of people make is they're they're trying to work on this mind muscle connection at the same time They know that lifting more weight makes them stronger and build more muscle and the and they're a bit conflicting Especially when you're trying to learn to get better connected So you got to let go of the kind of the ego lifting lighten up the load Substantially and really concentrate on feeling it where you're supposed to and then again, you know you you're stuck You've got this down really well when someone could say hey flex your rear delt Hey flex your tricep. Hey flex your chest and you can flex your lats and you can do that without any resistance whatsoever That means you have really good control of that muscle and what will do that is really light weight and slowing down the movement and Concentrate in isolation movements isolation movements as you said are perfect For developing a better mind muscle connection and then there's the portion of a repetition That's most important to focus on now the whole rep is important So full extension that like if I'm doing a curl full extension will be my arm opening all the way Full contraction would be me squeezing my arm all the way up at the very top now That full contraction is a great place to focus on when you're doing exercises to develop a better mind of muscle connection So let's say you you have a terrible connection to your chest You don't feel it when you bench press you don't feel it when you incline press Try doing a cable fly and really focus on the squeeze part of the fly where you hold the squeeze for three to four seconds That portion of the rep is the most important for developing the mind muscle connection And you'll find that if you have a terrible mind muscle connection It's that portion right there that you have the most difficulty Activating so if you can't feel your glutes same thing isolation movement squeeze the glute and it's fully Contracted position squeeze the hell out of it then go through the movement again and really what you're looking for is feel as Adam said It's the weight is arbitrary. It's all about the feel How do I feel this? Can I feel the muscle work in the entire time is all the work being done on the target muscle? That it's a very important skill to develop it. It helps you shape and sculpt your body The way you see fit. It's also important for correctional exercise So if you have imbalances being able to feel muscles work is real important often times when you have a Movement pattern issue or an imbalance part of that is you just can't feel the muscle is not doing much It's not doing much when you're trying to do certain exercises so connecting to it helps