How to use Your Mind to Increase Your Bench Pressing Abilities

As an athlete I am sure that you understand the power of mental preparation to improve your bench pressing performance.  The question is, are you using this skill before your lifts in order to perform optimally?

Ask yourself this question, what are you thinking, and seeing immediately before you lift a particular weight?  If you’re seeing anything but the lift, then you’re not focusing properly.

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Let me give you an example of mental preparation for bench pressing.

On my way to the gym, I am mentally seeing my entire bench pressing workout.  I am visualizing my warm ups, the weights, the sets… everything.  When I get to the gym I’m focused and ready to go.  Before each lift I have a mental routine that I go through, I learned this from the New Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz.  I go into the “theatre of my mind” and I see myself lifting the weight.  I see it with my eyes closed and then with my eyes open.  It’s important that you understand that you must see all the details.  When I see the success in my minds eye, that’s when I lift the weight.

When I prepare in this manner the lift is always easier for me to accomplish.  It’s as though my body has done it before and it’s simply repeating what I’ve done in the past.

There are some critical things to understand before you visualize.  You must visualize correctly.  In other words you must really know how to perform the bench press technically correct so that as you’re seeing yourself bench pressing, you’re doing it properly.

There are many different styles of mental preparation.  The one that works for many athletes is using the “the theatre of the mind” which was made famous by Dr. Maxwell Maltz in his ground breaking book the  New Psycho-Cybernetics.

Tags: bench pressing