What I want to do here is answer a question about shocking the muscles, or keeping your body guessing.  The short answer is yes, you do have to “Shock” your muscles to make them grow, but this isn’t nearly as dramatic or difficult as it sounds, or as crazy as most gym rats make it out to be.

1.When a physical factor is presented to your body, your body naturally reacts to it.  Think about being exposed to the sun for too long, you get sunburned.  After running a distance, you get winded, but then something amazing happens.

2. After a certain amount of time, and this time varies for every individual, your body grows accustomed to certain factors, and it adapts to these factors, becoming more and more tolerant of the factor.  This means that after repeated sun exposure, you start getting tan, and after running daily, you can run farther and faster.

1. When the body adapts to the factor, it needs more and varying levels of the factor to maintain the adaptation.  You might have a tan, but if you stay out of the sun, you don’t need it and your tan fades away.  If you stop running, your ability to run far and fast will start to fade; because your body doesn’t need to be able to run this way anymore.

The adaptations are based on what your body needs.  The bad part is what you want, and what your body needs are usually two different things.  Your body will adapt based on what it needs, not on what you want.  This can be altered, if you know how to do it.  My Mental Edge Muscle Building Program tells you how to merge what your body needs with what you want, to produce rapid, favorable results.

The previous rules apply to muscle growth.  When you lift weights, your body reacts to it and you get sore.  After a certain amount of weight training, your body adapts to the new stress by increasing muscle mass to increase strength.  You have to continually present your muscles with different stresses to make sure it keeps adapting (growing), and that your muscles don’t fade away.

So as you can see, you must constantly give your muscles a stress load that they are not used to.  Once you do this, they will adapt to the new stress, and then you will need to stress them even further.  Basically, you have to keep giving them something they are not used to, so they will keep adapting (growing).

This isn’t very difficult to do, and luckily, you don’t have to do it all that often.  Studies show that the body adapts and stops responding to certain weight training routines within a few days.  This means that if you do the same reps, same weight, and do everything the same as the last workout, your muscles will not grow, they don’t need too, there is no new stress to adapt too.  The bottom line is that something has to change.

There are several things that you can change to keep your muscles adapting, or “keep the body guessing.”  The list below is only a few things that can be changed to shock your muscles.  Remember, you only need a shock to the muscles, don’t electrocute them.  When trying to shake things up, you only need to change one of the factors below.  Every few weeks, try focusing on changing one of these factors.

• The amount of reps – More or less, and adjust your weight accordingly
• The amount of sets – Same as above, more sets =less reps per set
• The amount of weight – Try to add weight/tonnage every workout
• The amount of time for each set and for the workout as a whole – Try to reduce
• The amount of rest between sets – Reduce this time
• The frequency of your workouts- Change from MWF to TRS, or MWS

You don’t have to hang upside down from a metal pole with your legs between your arms and do a pull up to hit your biceps at a different angle.  Simply focus on changing the reps, sets, weight, or any of the factors listed above to shock your muscles, and you will be constantly forcing your body to adapt and grow more muscle.

In the early days of bodybuilding competitors realized that the mind is greatly responsible for their degree of progress.  The famous Mr. Olympia, now Governator of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger has always emphasized that success in bodybuilding begins in the mind.

Concentration, or focused attention, is a key to achieving almost anything in life, and bodybuilding/ weight lifting is no exception.  Regardless of how intently you apply yourself physically to the completion of an exercise, you will never meet the high standards that you need to meet in order to gain size and strength, unless your mind it totally focused on the exercise.  It is a common flaw of all people that being able to focus 100% on one thing, at one time is almost impossible.  There always seem to be other intrusions enter the mind: financial woes, relationship issues, doubt in yourself, lack of time…

These distractions are necessary, but as you continue to progress in your goals to succeed as a bodybuilder, you will become better and better at keeping out and ignoring these distractions.

The following 10 steps will help you hone your skills in order to concentrate on your bodybuilding success.

1. Try to block out all negative thoughts.  This means ALL negative thoughts.
2. Always think about your training in a positive, encouraging manner.
3. Keep your mind on the workout.  When in the gym, don’t think about anything but success in the gym.
4. Plan your workouts so you won’t be interrupted or distracted.  This could include not working out next to the classroom during the bikini boot camp.
5. Don’t make excuses to miss a workout.
6. Make every exercise mental as well as physical.
7. Go to the gym to work out.  Be nice, but make it clear that you are there to train, not to socialize.  Wearing headphones will cut down on chit chat.
8. Have a plan.  Develop a workout plan for the day’s workout so you will know what you have left to do, and what you have already accomplished.
9. Look forward to training.  You are doing it for a reason, look forward to the benefits of successful training.
10. Use the visual imagery technique.  Force your mind and will power to push your muscles.

Use these tips and stay focused.

That still stands, but that was only assuming you had legs that were developed at least enough to not have to wear sweat pants in 110 degree weather.  You know the type, the guys that have huge upper bodies, but will never, ever be seen wearing shorts.  The reason is simple, they are embarrassed of their legs being so small that they will suffer and sweat in the heat of their pants before ever considering taking them off to reveal their tiny sticks for legs.   Why would you want to be one of these guys?  You don’t want to be, so all you have to do is…

Just Train Your Legs

Wow, that was simple, but you already knew the answer.  We all know that if we want bigger, stronger, more attractive looking legs, we have to train them.  Speaking of attractive, a recent poll at bodysport.com cited that majority of females answered that the body part they notice the most on a man is his butt.  Well, if the ladies are looking at it, you want it to look good, and you can.  Let me give you a few tips on how to make leg training more bearable and possibly enjoyable.

1. Get Your Mind Right

If you’ve always told yourself that leg training sucks, you can’t get your legs to grow, or you hate leg training, well guess what.  No wonder it sucks.  If you fill your mind with negativity about something, you cant help but hate it.   The truth is, effective leg training is uncomfortable, it can even hurt.  Just keep in mind, any discomfort is only temporary, but the pain of forever having skinny, painfully disproportionate legs is permanent.  You need to first visualize your success.  Feel how awesome it would feel to have your legs as big as you want them to be.  Convince yourself that “leg day” is your favorite day and that you like working your legs more than any other body muscle group.  It probably won’t be true at first, but over time, as you start seeing results, your leg training experience will really back up the positive thoughts you were thinking.

1. Get In Some Cardio

Remember the last time you worked your legs really hard? Did you get nauseous, did you feel light headed or sick?  It’s so much easier to train legs efficiently when you are in good cardiovascular shape.  It would be a good idea to start doing a little cardio, if you don’t already.  The better cardiovascular shape you are in, the less nausea and light headedness you will experience.

1. Don’t Try To Explode In One Day

You don’t have to set a new squat record every time you lift your legs.  You don’t even have to do squats if you don’t want too, or if you have physical limitations that don’t allow you too.  Start out slow and let your legs adapt to your training over a few weeks.  Slowly add more and more weight, sets, and reps as you go.  If you start training your legs consistently, they will start to grow.  If you work them, they will grow.

1. Work Your Legs

Huge Legs

Your legs contain a huge amount of muscle.  They make up almost half of your body’s muscle mass, why would you not want to work them?  Since the leg muscles are so big, working them burns a ton of calories.  Since they are such a large muscle mass, working them creates a major anabolic effect.

So stop dealing with skinny, underdeveloped sticks for legs.  Get ready to take off the sweat pants, or never need to put them on in the first place.  If you train them, they will grow.

If you need a little boost to your program, or have no program at all, check out the best way to gain muscle. You can download the Mental Edge Muscle Building Program’s 7 Part Muscle Building Guide for free.

By now, we are all familiar with the Placebo Effect and what it is can do for mind and muscle.  If not, you can find a great post about the subject on the Mind and Muscle Placebo Effect.

Also, this is Part 2 of a 3 part series.  You can view part 1: Mind Over Muscle right here.

The placebo is usually used in the medical practice when a patient is in need of medicine and gets a placebo, or a substance with no active ingredients.  After the “drug” is taken, the patient feels real, positive results.  The patient knew the drug healed people and believed he would be healed, and sure enough, he was healed.

The Placebo Effect

Obviously it wasn’t some random non medicine that healed the person, so the question remains, what healed him?

The answer is, he healed himself.

The power of the human brain is absolutely amazing.  It made your body and can heal it.  The thing that really healed the person was his strong belief that he would indeed be healed.  It didn’t matter that he thought it was the “medicine” that healed him, it was his belief that healed him.

The Placebo Effect heals people because they believe they will be healed, but there is also an opposite reaction, the Nocebo Effect.  This is when a person totally believes that they won’t be healed, so they don’t get healed.

What Does This Have To Do With Muscle Building?

The placebo and nocebo effect can also be found when trying to gain muscle.  People do or don’t become healed based upon their beliefs, and people can gain or not gain muscle based on their beliefs.

This is really a problem in the fitness industry and it’s more prevalent with guys trying to gain muscle. I’m not exactly talking about the placebo effect being prevalent, but in a person’s faith in their physical abilities.  So many people get on an exercise kick expecting immediate and mind blowing results, but once those results don’t occur overnight, the person’s faith in what they were doing will plummet and doubt will set in.

Just as in the Placebo or Nocebo Effect, a person can often receive physically what they believe to be totally true mentally.  This can include sickness, health, fat, or muscle.  The ability to change your body can be the same way.  When you really believe that you will gain muscle and do the things you should, you probably will gain muscle. It can also work against you, if you don’t think you can gain muscle, you probably won’t, and you are working against yourself.

When you start believing something with all you have, you set the gears of progress in motion in your mind. This activates your brain to do what it needs to do to get you what you want.  The bad part is, it also works in reverse, when you lose your faith and let doubt come in, those same wheels screech to a halt and will usually shift into reverse.  It’s like having a lot of basketballs in your hands and right before you get where you want, you start to doubt that you’ll make it and all of the basketballs fall out of your hands and go bouncing away.

The best way to keep the forward progress going is the stay full of positive thoughts and not let doubt set in.  Below are a few easy, basic steps to keep the muscle building success going:

1. Positivity:  This is as necessary as it is obvious and simple.  If you are constantly thinking positively about your muscle gains, then you leave no room for doubt.  I don’t want to turn this into a therapy session, just keep it simple.  With all of your thoughts about supplements, nutrition, and training, think about how they are positively creating muscle building results.
2. Reinforcement Visualization- You should not only think positively about your efforts to gain muscle, but you should also visualize your success.  Imagine yourself looking how you want to look, lifting how you want to lift, or dating the person you want to date.  Don’t just imagine this, interact with it.  Make it a mental movie that you are the star of and feel how great it feels to accomplish your goal.  Where you go in your mind, you’ll go in the body.
3. Believe in Your Abilities:  You must always believe that you can and will accomplish your goal.  Never doubt that you can gain strength and size.  If you don’t believe you can build muscle, you will quit way before you actually do.

Winning the muscle building mind game is just one part of success.  You have to have a solid training, nutrition, and rest and recovery plan in place to really take full advantage of your mind and muscle connection.  Your mind can control your brain, and your brain controls your body.  Use your mind and muscle connection and use your positive thoughts for your advantage.

A few vidoes to sum it all up:

So I asked him why he was doing what he was doing. He said, “Traps are where it’s at!”  I tend to agree with him.

The trapezius muscles are the muscles that sit on top of your shoulders above your collar bone that extend from the edge of your shoulders all the way to your neck.

Traps are a muscle that separates the men from the boys.  They can be an amazing sight, and can be downright scary, and sometimes just ridiculously big.  Big traps can be the difference between you looking like a person that lifts weights and a person that doesn’t.  Big traps can be the difference in a fit guy looking like a fitness model, or a bodybuilder.  Huge traps basically send a message, they are a statement.  What are your traps saying?

Huge Traps

Weak Traps

Trap Exercises

Most people associate building big traps with “Shrugs.”  The shrug is a good exercise for trap development, but it’s not the only one.  The shrug has been around for years and is a staple for building traps just as the bench press is for the chest.  I can’t deny that the shrug hits the traps well, but I would like to assert to you that there are others moves that can be effective in developing the coveted traps.  Below are a few effective trap building exercises that will deliver huge traps.

1. Lateral Raises, with Traps Flared  3X12-15

This is a tough little exercise.  The first step is to flare your traps up with dumbbells in hand.  Then perform a lateral raise by keeping your elbows almost locked and lifting the weight directly out to the side.  This is the same thing as a normal lateral raise to hit the deltoids (shoulders), but with your traps flared like this, it really works them hard.  I suggest doing 12-15 reps because it is difficult to use much weight and maintain proper form. Take a look at the video below for an example.

1. Bent over lateral raises, with Traps Flared  3X10-12

Same as above, just bend over at about a 45 degree angle.  This is a good trap exercise because it hits the back of your traps.  Built rear traps look impressive from the back and give your back a very built, defined, strong look.  Take a look at the video below for an example.

I couldn’t leave these out, if you must do shrugs, let me give you some tips.   We all know how to do shrugs, but let me give you a few tips.  If you are like me, your traps hit the side of your neck limiting the range of motion.  If this is the case, perform the shrug and push your head forward. This gives your traps more room to contract and you don’t feel like your head is going to pop off, this is definitely a good thing.   Also, keep your shoulders back, you’ll notice that you are hitting the tops and back of your traps.  Also, since there is such a small range of motion, make sure to contract (lift) fully and hold that position for 2 seconds, before slowly lowering the weight back to the starting position.  I would also sit down to avoid cheating by heaving the massive amount of weight.  Take a look at the video below for a demo.

These exercises will directly impact the growth of your traps. This addition to a workout can be incorporated into any workout split.  For those doing a split, this would be a good addition to “shoulders day.”  Add this quick trap routine to your schedule and watch your traps explode in muscle growth!