In one of our first sessions together at her gym, my WNBF competition coach taught me about the mind-muscle connection. I’d heard about muscle memory before, but mind-muscle connection was new to me.

Mostly because I wasn’t much of an athlete for my first four decades! Other than weekend mountain biking excursions with my husband, a long roller blade together on a summer’s eve after work, or a quick sprint in the rain once in a blue moon, pre-40 the only athletic endeavour I knew consistently was that of desk jockey. A lot has changed since I decided to take ownership of my quality of life and become an “everyday athlete” at the gym.

What is mind-muscle connection?

Turns out, if your mind isn’t focused on the muscle group being worked on, the act of lifting a weight with those muscles is physically less effective. What does it look like when someone is performing this task? When you see people watching themselves in the mirror or staring down at the muscle group they’re working on at the gym, to the untrained eye they might look vain. But what they’re (probably) doing is harnessing more muscle fibres by actively telling their body what’s going on. They are using the power of mind-muscle connection to pump up a specific area.

Scientifically speaking, and paraphrasing one source (bodybuilding.com): “the mind-muscle connection occurs at something called the neuromuscular junction. This is where the mind meets the body. The brain releases a chemical neurotransmitter called acetylcholine to communicate with muscles in the body. The more you can improve this communication, the more muscle fibres you will recruit, resulting in a better quality muscle contraction, and a better workout.”

Can your muscles improve your mind?

If your mind can target your muscles to improve your physical training experience, what about the reverse? Can your muscles be recruited to improve your mind?

Take a step outside the gym with me for a moment. Humans are tribal beings. We look for groups and seek acceptance to remain in them. We want to belong. We seek leaders to inspire us, look to each other to bounce our ideas off and share experiences, and we naturally desire validation from our tribe that what we’re doing is right, or at least sufficiently so. The gym is not the place for this.

With the advent (or demise) of the social media tribal voice, the theme of the last decade netted out loudly to “Am I good enough?” We’ve all seen it in the photo sharing of selfies, felt it as we’ve sifted through likes and comments, and loathed ourselves for caring too much about what others thought in the first place.

Saul Levine M.D. in Psychology Today says, “Studies show that a sense of belonging is related to feelings of well-being and better health…” He continues, “But while we value the importance of belonging, dangers lurk when there is an absence of benevolence. Excessive group cohesiveness and feelings of superiority breed mistrust and dislike of others and can prevent or destroy caring relationships.” (Then he goes on to talk about how war starts in tribes and across tribes… Yikes!)

It’s a tricky business this need to belong. We need to belong to part of a larger community for survival, but we need to simultaneously nurture our own individual needs to physically and psychologically thrive. We live among a complex social system of diverse personality types and communication styles. As a result we have, from time to time, succumbed to the mental and emotional data overload at play (and at work!). And then, as if live social environments weren’t enough to process, we’ve gotten into the habit of filling our precious down time with texting, scrolling and double-clicking. (Gotta wonder what THAT mind-muscle connection is doing to us!)

Here’s the upside of social media: awareness of mental health became a huge focal point and topic for discussion this last decade. If the question was “Am I good enough?” and the answer came back “no”, then coping through over-eating, alcohol or drugs (as have been the tradition for decades upon decades, surely centuries past), have been levelled up to healthier options, like talking.

In globally rich countries where shoving your pain down used to be acceptable to drive GDP, the entire dialogue changed. Governments began to embrace talking about mental health, mental illness and their role in addictions education. Corporate programs for coping with stress erupted. Terminology for everyday mental health norms became used more openly and with less stigma to describe them: “I’m depressed”, “I’m anxious”, “I’m feeling down”. It’s ok. Let’s talk. Take a sick day. Take a pill.

Here’s the prescription.

What if I told you there was a pill to help you feel amazing, be your best, look your best, reduce stress, calm your nerves, and develop neural pathways to improve brain-body coordination at any age? Would you take the pill? Not yet. No, you’re too smart. You’d ask me what the side-effects and costs were. To which I would answer, “Mentally it’s like ecstasy but without MDMA.” Awesome. “Physically, it’s extremely low-risk (if you start with a trainer, at least in the very beginning)”. Hmmm, this sounds like work. “And financially it’ll cost about the same as your weekend wine/craft beer habit plus a bit of fuel to drive over to your nearest municipal gym or rec-centre every couple of days.” You’d be slower to sign up, no?

Here’s the rub. Lifting weights 3-4 times a week, on a gradually heavier scale (once a set gets too easy for you to lift repeatedly), will take you far beyond the beneficial physical outcomes. Mentally, lifting weights can meditatively clear your head from day-to-day stresses better than any yoga can. (Yoga is great for toning and meditation, but weight lifting has been proven to burn calories from food and drink for more hours post-workout than any cardiovascular activity can, even running – which will damage your knees eventually.) 

What a time commitment! Now you’re hesitant. You have other things that need being done. Lots of to-do items on your checklist. So what if I told you, if you commit the rest of your life to doing just a little bit of this (physical, mostly mindless) labour you would live longer – would you sign up then? Or does the magical non-existent pill still look better because it’s the easier one to swallow?

Our health is our own responsibility.

I know this is another hard pill to swallow but no one else owns the job of staying healthy but you (and me). No one. Not the government. Not your family. You. When I didn’t know how far my breast cancer had spread and realized I might die soon, I understood in one heartfelt moment of self-reflection: we exit alone.

We come here to belong in tribes, but we die alone. Every community has its healers, and thankfully here in Canada there’s a free health care system in place to get some healing, but we’re all bound to break one day. You know you weren’t designed to last forever. 

Whether you choose a team sport to stay active in until old age (which is statistically unlikely due to the increase of sports-related injuries as we age), or you choose a long daily walk perhaps after an injury (which is great for the mind but will do nothing to develop muscle or increase your heart-rate to the level considered beneficial), there is nothing quite like lifting weights to add to your routine. Or make it the only part of your routine when all else fails. Approximately 40 per cent of your body is made up of skeletal muscles. Why not train all of them to last, until you can’t?

It activates a good percentage of the vessel you were given to pass through this life. If one part of you is injured there are always other muscles you can train (assuming you’re not in a body cast). And like any spiritual pursuit where repetition is key for the mind to harness the power of creativity that lives within, lifting weights offers the mind enough time to take pause. Focusing in on a repetitive activity over and again, grants us mental health benefits as good as any “Om” chanted from the yoga mat.  

In October 2019, the Canadian non-profit Participaction gave adults an F when it comes to moderate-to-vigorous activity, finding just 16 per cent of adults get the recommended 150 minutes each week. Does this sound like you or someone you love? As you try to stay on track with your resolutions this decade, my advice if I may, is this:

Use your muscles to harness the power of your mind, meditating through each set of reps, and use your mind to focus on the group of muscles you’re contracting to ensure the best physical outcome.

You’ll take back ownership of your body, and hopefully your mind, for the long term.

By Penny Greening