the importance of the mind in bodybuilding

Posted on: 04/21/2015

Training and motivation

For decades, sport has been recommended for its health benefits. Health can be physical, as well as moral and mental.

Sport of any kind calls on a variety of qualities. These qualities are physiological, physical and mental. All these qualities can be developed or improved to a certain extent...

Of course, the purpose of the activity and the level of practice will contribute to the improvement of these qualities.

Genetic factors, however, will be a brake on these improvements.

Developing physiological and physical qualities

Each of us is endowed with different physiological and physical qualities. For example, a person with good endurance capacity who chooses a sport such as running or cycling will work on these qualities and thus potentially improve them.

Another person with a physiological capacity for relaxation who chooses a sport such as basketball or high jump will also work on and improve this quality.

The more advanced the sport and the more specific the training, the greater the improvement in the practitioner's qualities.

Of course, technical knowledge and mastery will also help to achieve this.

Mental en musculation

Mental qualities

When an athlete has mastered the technique of a discipline - in our case, bodybuilding - and is striving to improve his or her physiological qualities, what will make the difference is the mental aspect.

Two athletes may have the same knowledge of the discipline and of dietetics, they may be very close in their physical qualities, but what will differentiate them and make one better or achieve better results will be the mental ability of the other to surpass himself.

Great athletes are those who are capable of pushing their physical limits to the limit.

In bodybuilding, the key to pushing the body to the limit is being able to withstand the pain of muscular stimulation and lactic acid build-up. If the athlete is not endowed with great mental capacity and tenacity, he won't be able to push his body to the limits that will lead to development.

What's more, when you go from being a simple practitioner to a competitor, and when the dietary factor, and more specifically the weight loss diet, comes into play, the mental aspect takes on its full dimension. A competitive bodybuilder's ability to cope with training while being undernourished for several weeks will put his mental faculties to the test.

The stronger the athlete is mentally, the more he or she will be able to withstand the training, the undernourishment and the fatigue associated with it.

So it's important to have extraordinary mental capacity to achieve these goals.

the importance of perseverance

In conclusion, I'd say that, as in all sports, having well-developed, high-performance physical and physiological aptitudes is the key to great performances. Technical knowledge also improves performance, and the right gesture is synonymous with energy saving and efficiency, and in the case of bodybuilding, with better muscle stimulation.

But what really takes an athlete to the next level is the mental capacity to go beyond his or her limits.

Work on your mental qualities, forcing yourself to go beyond pain and muscle burn, because they too can be improved through training.