Bodybuilding success, the authors summarize, reduces to mindset.
Successful weightlifters are able to concentrate to the extent they can block out external as well as internal noise.
On the last, it’s all these voices inside our heads that tell us stuff like, “Those weights are heavy,” “I’m tired,” or, “I’m a wimp compared to the others. They’re amazing!”
Unfortunately, we can always rely on this Johnny-on-the-spot critic to be perpetually around. It only retires when we fire it and replace it with positive voices.
According to Edward Smith in Not Just Pumping Iron, the four parts of a lifter’s psych-up are centering, charging, grounding, and discharging. Each of these stages has its own abysmal mental clutter. To cope with the clutter – or to transform it into positive voices – Dresdin Archibald suggests that nothing helps as much as throwing ourselves in Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of “flow”.
Legendary psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s famous investigations of “optimal experience” show that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life.
For a bodybuilder, flow, according to bodylifting Olympics coach Dresdin Archibald, can be achieved through modulated breathing and by focusing on that breath:
“A weightlifter needs concentration for a great effort done in a second or two, all with correct form.”
How can you as the weightlifter achieve this focus?