“Stop uselessly wasting so much of your energy. You need to focus.”
My grandmother used to say that to me as often as she possibly could. Granted, when she was telling me this she was talking about working on her farm, but the lesson shouldn’t be lost on it’s situation.
Focusing your energy is a lost art in the weight room. There isn’t a gym in the nation where everyone is clearly focusing their energy on the task at hand. It’s a very difficult ability to develop while you are putting your body under great duress, but the advantages of spending the time to learn to focus your energy can greatly outweigh the gains that you are currently making. There are only a few steps that you must take in order to become the energy focusing machine that I know you can be.
The first step towards learning to focus your energy in the gym is to focus on your breathing. There is always inhalation on the negative and exhalation on the contraction of your designated muscle groups. This can be effectively implemented into your daily routine by taking a step back and going with lower weights so that you can concentrate on your breathing. I cannot stress enough the importance of breathing while lifting weights. Make sure that you continue breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. Once the breathing pattern becomes a subconscious effort and not something that you have to concentrate on during every lift, then you can move on to paying attention to the rest of your body.
One of the things I’ve noticed with great weight lifters is that they look almost stoic as they lift. I’ve also noticed that amateurs love to scream, yell, make funny facial expressions, and simply expend excess energy through their lifts. I do know that yelling, screaming, and making facial expressions may get you “pumped” while lifting, but it expends a lot of energy you should be focusing to your ever-exhausting muscles. The best way that I have found to learn to focus your energies effectively throughout your body is to practice yoga on a regular basis. For instance, I go through two 1.5 hour long sessions of yoga a week, along with my own meditation routines. Yoga forces you to not only acknowledge, but understand where your energy is going and why.
Once you start developing a deeper understanding of your body you can start focusing your energy where it needs to be. If this is done properly, you can reach new heights in the weight room while keeping the yelling and scrunched up faces to a minimum.
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