Mind Over Muscleby Anthony Arvanitakis

2 Mind Over Muscle

Copyright ©2016 by Anthony Arvanitakis

All rights reserved

http://www.superherohomeworkout.com

Disclaimer All information in this workout plan is presented to you with good intentions. As with any exercise/diet plan, you must first consult your physician. Especially if you have any medical condition or injury that contraindicates physical activity. All forms of exercise pose some inherent risks. You must take full responsibility for your safety and know your limits. Before practicing the exercises in this book, make sure that any kind of equipment or surface you train on is well maintained. Do not take risks beyond your personal level of experience, aptitude, training and fitness. If you experience any acute or chronic pain, consult a physician. This publication is intended for informational use only, and I will not assume any liability or be held responsible for any form of injury by the utilization of this information.

3Mind Over Muscle

Intro

Ever since I was 12, I have been a fan of strength train-ing. I’ve trained with bar-bells, machines and I’ve done

a bunch of other sports as well. I can say, without a doubt, that body-weight exercise (BWE) is the most sustainable, fun, functional, healthy and practical way to develop an aes-thetic physique. Combine BWE with the appropriate mind-to-muscle con-nection and you’ll develop strength beyond what you ever thought pos-sible.

What is an appropriate mind-to-muscle connection? First, let’s focus on the basics. If you want to carve an exceptional physique through bodyweight exercise, simply going through the movement and motions of BWEs isn’t enough. You need to have a goal – and that goal is to be constantly progressing by getting stronger.

So, how do you get stronger with BWE?

You just try to do more reps each week or month, right? Well… yes and no. Even if one tries to constantly perform more reps, but ignores im-portant Mind-to-Muscle Connection (MMC) principles, their results willhit a plateau after a certain point.Not only that, but abusing your bodywith countless reps all the time alsoleads to injuries and joint inflamma-tion at some point. I see it all thetime, people doing a ton of meaning-less reps without anything but inju-ries to show for it.

When a skinny guys asks me how many push-ups I can do I say, “well, no more than 20 good reps I guess”. This usually makes the average skin-ny guy, to look at me with disbelief. The typical response (or thought that goes on in their head as they give me a look of disbelief) is “Pfff, I can do sets of 50, how come I’m not more ripped than you? It must be in your genes or something. How else would you develop such a body just by being able to do 20 push-ups…”?

4 Mind Over Muscle

5Mind Over Muscle

I started my own development of MMC a few years ago. I began practicing it sort of ac-cidentally, since I wasn’t even aware that I was doing this. What lead me to MMC

was the fact that I was looking to get something more out of my workouts. Those last few years, I was starting to feel bored of simply banging out mechanical reps like a senseless robot. I was looking for a deeper and more meaningful expe-rience from my strength training.

It started off more as a mindful way of training, probably because I’m also really into mindful-ness meditation. Eventually, by strengthening the strongest muscle of my body – my mind, the rest of my body also started to change. Initial-ly, I started applying these techniques for fun during my pull-ups. I stopped obsessing about adding more reps, and I just tried doing sets of 8 reps, as perfectly and as mindfully as possible.

After that, I also started studying, in detail, the anatomical and biomechanical aspect behind

the motions of a pull-up. This way, I learned how to enhance my MMC tech-niques by under-standing exactly what was hap-

pening in my body. Getting a deeper and more visual understanding of how the body works, can make it more intriguing for you to focus on repetition quality than quantity.

I let go of my ego’s greed for more reps, in ex-change for a more mindful way of training.

Results?

I actually got stronger and gained more muscle (even though that wasn’t my initial purpose). By cutting out every single bit of momentum, and by gaining full control over each micro-move-ment involved in my pull-ups, I gained greater and deeper muscle activation. I even started feeling sore again for the first time in a long time. In the end, this feeling of self-mastery and control of movement made my workouts inter-esting again! Instead of just counting my reps in my head - I was experiencing them. I was more connected with my body.

Discovering the Mind

to Muscle Connection

(MMC)

“Don’t just count reps, experience them. Be more in your body that in

your head…”

6 Mind Over Muscle

After all that, I started observ-ing the disconnect many oth-er people had from their bod-ies. I noticed that, even when

people are using good form, from an external perspective, they’re usual-ly lacking a proper MMC or “internal form” if you may.

Most people focus on peripheral strength-training characteristics - aka external cues. External cues are all those training characteristics that are #1, measurable (reps, sets, rest-ing times etc.) and #2 obvious to the eye, such as your form/technique during an exercise (i.e. using bad form during a push-up by hunch-ing your shoulders).

Basic External cues: Reps, sets, resting time and external exer-cise technique…

External cues are crucial, and should be the first thing one fo-cuses on getting right, especially as a beginner. But that’s just half of the picture. The other half are internal cues. Internal cues are the inner biofeedback your body gives you during your training.

If you remain focused during your workouts, you can learn to manipu-late these.

When it comes to gaining muscle,

Why people fail at building Muscle with Bodyweight Exercise

Push-ups in the zone

7Mind Over Muscle

one of the most important internal cues is muscle tension (how flexed/contracted a muscle is). Another one is, the muscle “burn” you feel sometimes during higher reps, or work-out methods such as supersets (this is caused by oxygen de-pletion of your muscle cells). Neuromuscu-lar fatigue (when you fail to do another rep

while usually working in low rep ranges) and “the pump” (that swollen feeling after a set), are

some other internal cues.

Basic Internal cues: Muscle ten-sion, Muscle fatigue, the “pump”, the

“burn”

Here’s an example of how awareness of internal cues can be helpful. If you’re doing push-ups and

you’re feeling them more in your shoulders instead of your chest – you’re getting the wrong internal cue.

Being aware of this can help you make appropriate changes in both internal and external cues. in order to

redirect the intensity to the right primary targeted muscles (in this case, the chest).

In summary: Muscle tension always trumps meaningless reps. Don't beat up your joints and tendons by doing use-less reps with momentum and bad form. Focus on targeted and maximum muscle fatigue. Don't use good form - use perfect form (in 9/10 of your reps at least). Learn to be mindful and in the zone during your whole workout.

Muscle tension trumps meaning-

less reps…

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Pretty often in life, we don’t ask why we do the things we do! We act in robotic ways, led mainly by our primal brain

(that’s the part our brain that is main-ly concerned with primal needs like food, sex and pain aversion). We avoid pausing for a brief moment, to eval-uate if what we’re doing, is the most optimal way of accomplishing what we’re trying to achieve. This might sound incredibly simple, but it can make a huge difference in improving your life…

When working on mind to muscle con-nection (MMC) techniques, your atten-tion shouldn’t be all over your body. MMC technique has to be specific, and targeted at the right muscles. For ex-ample, pull-up MMC has to be targeted on the back’s musculature.

Just having a general awareness of your body isn’t enough for practic-ing MMC techniques properly. MMC has to be specific and targeted at the right muscles. You need muscle specific tension (MST). People are so obsessed with external cues (get-ting more reps and sets done) that they ignore MST. Lack of MST is why peoples’ bodies stop changing after their newbie gains period (first 3-6 months).

What are the benefits of applying Muscle specific tension?

Mind-muscle techniques, such as mus-cle specific tension (MST) are used to stimulate more muscle growth (hyper-trophy). They are not ideal for athletic purposes. This means that they are not going to help you do more reps, or lift more weight in a strength-related exercise. On the contrary, it will make the exercise even more difficult to per-form.

1. Muscle hypertrophyBodyweight exercise (BWE) is great. It is functional, and it produces superi-or core activation, in comparison with other strength training methods such as gym-machines. They also improve coordination, balance and kinesthetic awareness. One downside of BWE is that you cannot increase intensity as easily as you would, by adding more weights to a barbell for example. Sure, there are multi-ple variations you can apply to each exercise. For ex-ample you can make adjustments by changing an-gles (i.e. instead of regular push-ups you can do decline push-ups). But af-ter a certain point, you also need other tools, if you want to properly focus on muscle hypertro-phy. This is where MST (Muscle Spe-cific Tension) comes in handy. If you want to build muscle more efficiently with bodyweight exercises, you have to teach your neuromuscular system to recruit as many muscle fibres as possible.

2. Break advanced plateaus with MMC trainingAfter your newbie gains (usually the first 3-6 months of training), progress begins to slow down. After 3-4 years of training, most of us come pretty close to our ultimate potential (assuming we’ve been training intelligently). But here are the good news! When one has ignored MMC training techniques during those 3-4 years, neuromuscular potential is still untapped. So, if you’ve haven’t been paying attention to MMC, and you’ve been miserable due to your physique improvement plateaus these last years – there is still hope for you

my friend! By learning to apply these techniques, you will re-boot your mus-cle-building and fat-burning mech-anisms. Your body will begin getting and looking stronger once again!

3. Muscle Specific Tension (MST) produces overall superior muscle tension!Applying MST doesn’t mean that other muscles won’t be activated

during each exer-cise. On the con-trary! When MST is applied, general muscle tension won’t be limited to those main target-ed muscles. It will also carry over and produce superior muscle tension on the rest of the sur-

rounding/secondary targeted muscles. You won’t feel it at that moment (be-cause you’ll be focused on the main targeted muscles), but trust me… you’ll feel it the next day! For example, this is why during pull ups, if you focus on MST techniques for the back, your arms will also become massive! More on this later as well…

4. Self-masteryBesides superior muscle activation, you will also experience your workout on a deeper level. You will develop physical awareness and mind-over-muscle con-trol, which can increase your general awareness as well. I find a spiritual as-pect in learning to achieve maximum control of my body through my mind. I consider it a form of meditation, and part of one’s path to self-mastery. By taming the mind through mindfulness meditation, one can achieve mental control. By mastering your body, one can achieve physical control. And for ultimate self-mastery, one must obtain

Muscle Specific Tension

“Mind to muscle connection helps you build more

muscle – NOT do more reps...”

9Mind Over Muscle

control over both…

In summary: Don’t worry if you’re still struggling to completely un-derstand MMC. There’ll be plenty of guidelines and examples further on. MMC is a bit like Quantum physics in terms of understanding (although not that difficult, don’t worry) … If you think you get it the first time you hear about it – that means you don’t really get it. MMC is not a thing you understand once, and then you can apply easily. It’s more of a skill that you have to keep on working on.

MMC teaches your neuromuscular system to fire up properly, and to in-duce superb muscle tension through razor focus and awareness. The more you improve MMC, the more it allows you to take advantage of as much as possible of your body's untapped po-tential for muscle-growth.

If I had to summarize MMC in three sentences, it would be: a) being aware of the inner cues/

biofeedback your body gives you during an exercise

b) using that biofeedback in order to maximize muscle tension in each exercise’s primary targeted mus-cles, and after that

c) improving, refining and striving to perfect these in every workout

People with amazing physiques throughout history always men-tioned the importance of internal cues. Yet, in this day and age of infor-mation overload, most of us seem to neglect them. After all, the strongest muscle of your body isn’t the back, chest or your legs... It’s your mind…

The strongest muscle of the body

is the mind

As mentioned previously, a beginner should first focus on good exter-nal form. Teaching the

nervous system, how to perform strength movements you aren't familiar with, takes a lot of fo-cus. One should master external technique, and at least 8 technical reps in an exercise, before starting to work on that exercise’s inner posture (MMC). If you’re not sure about whether your external tech-nique/exercise form is correct, go to my website and check out my video and text tutorials.

External cues are part of Inter-nal cuesOne more thing to keep in mind before moving on. From now on, when I’m talking about MMC tech-niques, I’ll often be mentioning internal cues as part of external cues. You see, after one masters external cues, one doesn’t simply stop working on them and starts focusing on internal ones. Instead, internal cues are added on top of external ones, since these become interdependent and inextricably linked to each other.

Muscle specific tension (MST) application

With every bodyweight exercise you’ll be doing, you’ll be applying MST techniques on the major tar-geted muscle group, in combina-tion with some other supplemen-tary muscles. It’s important to ac-tivate these supplementary mus-cles for proper form and safety.

For example: If you’re doing push-ups, MST should be used to pro-duce maximum muscle tension in the chest, in combination with

scapular depression and retraction (SDR). This is because SDR will cre-ate the ideal postural conditions for you to apply maximum tension on the chest without allowing the shoulders to hunch up (which can cause shoulder pain from nerve impingement).

Remember that focus and specific-ity is key! If attention is scattered all over the body, you won’t be able to maximize muscle tension where needed

Focus and specificity

are key!

How to Apply Mind to Muscle techniques to your Training

10 Mind Over Muscle

Although each exercise has its own differences and “se-cret” tips, there are some basic rules when applying MST.

Basic MST Rules:1. Switch-on the targeted muscle on cue: Prior to the

rest of the tips, learning to contract a muscle on cue is essential. Flexing one’s bicep for example, is some-thing everyone can do. Yet, when it comes to flexing the chest or back muscles, most of us have no idea how to properly do this.

2. Keep the tension on the muscles: Depending on the exercise, there are different ways of accomplish-ing this. For some exercises (like push-ups) not lock-ing out at the top position is one way to do this. For others, just keeping the muscle switched on through your mind-to-muscle connection, is enough. It all de-pends on the difficulty and kind of the exercise. More on this later.

3. Proper form through activation of postural muscles: In combination with the main targeted muscles, you have to teach some other muscles to fire automatically as well. This allows things, like, inhibition of muscles which get in the way of the muscles you are actually targeting, and greater mus-cle specific tension and contraction. For most upper body exercises, shoulder blade depression and retrac-tion (keeping your chest wide and shoulders down), serves that purpose. In push-ups, for example, it helps us avoid unnecessary muscle tension in the shoulders and pre-stretches the pecs, al-lowing them superior contraction.

4. Pausing in the middle of the rep: When doing a push related exercise like a push-up, most of us tend to bounce up once we reach the floor. Because our muscles and connec-tive tissues have elastic properties, when we bounce up like that, these elastic prop-erties act like springs. This is something that decreases muscle tension. Pausing at the bottom position eliminates this ef-fect. In pulling exercises, this is done by pausing at the top position and “squeezing the rep”, as I like to say. This allows muscle tension to reach its highest peak.

5. Practice, Practice, Practice: MMC is a skill, something that you should always keep improving.

Every time you're doing an exercise, ask yourself… Which primary muscle are you

targeting? Are you feeling this muscle contract? Do you have 100% of your undistracted attention on it? Don’t just go through the movement while being detached from your body - just banging out some reps and calling it a day! Pretty soon this will lead to mediocre results, and you getting so bored of your workouts that you just end up resenting them…

An unfocused workout is half a work-out...Finally, you’ve reached the part of the book where all of the ac-tion takes place! In the following pages I’ll be talking about all the exercises we’ll be using to build our ripped superhero physique. A n d most important of all, I’ll be showing you how to apply the appropriate mind to mus- c l e connection technique on each and every single one of them.

Five basic principles of applying Muscle specific tension (MST)

11Mind Over Muscle

derstand the exercise, I've also made a video for you.

Mind to muscle Homework: First make sure you have fully understood and prac-ticed the shoulder rolling exercise above. After that, practice it integrated with some simple push-ups. Perform a couple of easy sets, and notice the difference it makes on how the exercise feels.

Final note: Don't strain your muscles into keeping this shoulder form. Just enough tension to maintain the chest open, and the shoulders back and down, will do.

Before we get into the exercise specific techniques, I want to start with a basic supplementary muscle activation exercise that I’ll be using in a lot of upper body exercises – Scapular depression and retraction (SDR). In most compound* up-

per body exercises, things like shoulder shrugging, hunching and rounding of the back are common postural problematic behaviours. Besides injury and imbalances, these behaviours can get in the way of maximizing muscle-specific tension.

* A compound exercise is any exercise that involves the use of more than one ma-jor muscle group at a time. Typically, there is one larger muscle group that ends up doing the majority of the work, and then one or more smaller muscle groups that

are recruited secondarily.

SDR might sound a bit complicated for some of you, but it is quite simple to learn how to do. After some practice, you’ll

see that it’s simply about keeping an open chest and your shoulders back and down. A good cue for this

is to think “proud and open chest”.

How to practice Scapular depression and retraction (SDR):

a) From a standing position, roll your shoulders up, back and downwards

b) At the bottom of the roll, you want your shoulder blades retracted (squeezed together) and depressed (pushing downwards). This bottom position is the po-sition you want to assume later on, when practicing it in combination with exer-cises.

a) Roll your shoulders up and then b) back and down

If the pictures are not enough for you to un-

Scapular depression and retraction (SDR)

12 Mind Over Muscle

2. SDR: Open up your chest (pre-stretch the muscle) and keep your shoulders back and down.

3. Your arms should be placed a bit wid-er than shoulder width, and you should be leaning forward to remove as much weight as possible from your lower body.

4. Keeping your elbows pointed back and start lowering your body while leaning forward at the same time, in order to maintain maximum tension on your up-per body and chest.

4. Once you're close enough to the floor to kiss it, start pushing upwards, while maintaining perfect form.

5. Do not lock the elbows at the top posi-tion! Keep them slightly bent and repeat from the beginning again!

Recommendation: I highly recommend that you also learn to do push-ups on your knuckles. Not only does this increase the range of motion (you can go deeper), it also keeps your wrists a lot healthier in the long run.

2) DipsDips are another amazing exercise for the chest. But, most people fail to properly tar-get the chest when doing them. Let me first address a topic a lot of people ask about dips – how deep should you go? The com-mon advice online is that, if you go lower than 90 degrees, you’ll injure your shoul-ders. As if all is good if you’re going as deep as 89.999 degrees, but go past that, and your shoulders will explode or whatever. Yes, that’s a good tip if you have terrible shoulder mobility, but depth depends on mobility. It’s the same case with squats. Ass-to-the-grass squats can be great if you have the analogous mobility. Anything less than that and you can damage yourself.

Awareness is key in such topics. When it comes to dips, go as low as your shoulders

Some superheroes will tend to have a bulkier look, like Captain America. Others will be more prone to de-veloping less buff, but more rugged chests (like the Flash). Others will be in the middle. No matter what

kind of chest you’re more prone to developing – a wide, well-shaped chest, is always part of a superhero physique.

1) Push-upsJust as with any other exercise, push-ups have to be done in sets of 5-20 reps max. Don’t rush into trying more advanced push-up variations before you can do push-ups the right way. Even if you believe that you’re too strong for this exercise, learning to apply the proper MMC techniques will leave you humbled by the effectiveness of the simple push-up.

Note: If you’re at a point that you can already do more than 15 reps with perfect MMC (maybe you’ve already read and practiced my book: How to sculpt a Greek God Marble Chest with Push-ups), move on and start working on one-arm push-up progressions. The same MMC techniques described below can be gradually applied on one-arm push-ups, once you can do 8 good reps of them. One-arm push-ups take a lot of time to develop, but they are not impossible. Anyone with body-fat below 15% can achieve them if they work strategically on progressions (you can find these here).

Mind to Muscle connection tips for Push-upsAs I said, MMC techniques have some basic similarities in ev-ery exercise. Since push-ups are a bodyweight exercise that most people are familiar with, I thought it would be best to start with them as an example, and also include a video to make sure you understand everything perfectly. You can watch it over here. I recommend that you practice the guide-lines in the video thoroughly, and come back to the book again.

In summary:One tip I don’t mention in the video above, is SDR, which I described in the intro of this chapter. SDR will help you pre-stretch the chest muscles, which is crucial for proper contrac-tion of the chest. If SDR is not applied, a lot of work is taken over by the shoulders.

Let’s see all the steps in proper order once again:1. Switch the chest muscles on (don't go to any extremes -

don't squeeze the muscle, just wake it up)

Building that superhero Chest

13Mind Over Muscle

and chest feel good. Once you feel a light stretch in the shoulders and chest muscles, push yourself up again. This way, you can also work on a bit of shoul-der mobility at the same time - just don’t go too low. How low is too low? Well, once you feel the tension leaving the chest (around 125 degrees, usually), that’s the point you want to avoid, in order to get the best MMC for the chest. Again remember, you need the appropriate shoulder mobility to go that low. I don’t recommend this to everyone.

Ok, lets get started on our MMC tips now:1. Scapular depression and re-

traction (SDR): Get set up in a dip position (elbows still straight) and open your chest and activate your back through SDR.

2. Lean forward and switch on the chest muscles: From the previous position, lean a bit forward and switch on your chest muscles (be-fore you initiate any movement). Leaning forward focuses your weight more on your chest. In combination with switching on the muscle, you’ll be preparing the pecs for maximum contrac-tion.

3. Don’t go toooo deep: As you begin low-ering yourself downwards, always be mindful of keeping the tension on the muscle. Once you feel a light stretch on the chest you’ll know that you’ve gone deep enough. Remember, some-where around 125 degrees (assuming you have the analogous mobility to go that low) the shoulders begin taking over the work from the chest. So don’t go lower than that.

4. Pause at the bottom of the move-ment: By pausing at the bottom position of the rep, you’re elim-inating the rebound effect we talked about earlier. Just pause for a brief moment – maintain your focus on the chest – and start pushing up again.

5. Don’t lock out: By locking out your elbows (straightening) at the top position of a dip, you’re resting

your weight on your elbow joints. This means that muscle tension leaves the chest once again.

6. Go higher: Here’s my final and most “secret” dip tip. While you’re pushing yourself upwards, after you reach that top position (while still maintaining the elbows a bit bent), increase the range of motion even more by protracting (opposite of retraction) the scapulas. In oth-er words, release SDR and increase the range of motion by moving your shoulder blades away from each other. I’ve made a video to make this a bit more visual – click

here to watch (go to 3:00).

Notes on tip #6: The prime mover during protraction of the scapula is the serratus anterior, and the chest acts

as a synergist. But you can activate the chest even more during this movement, by giving it

a n extra squeeze during that protraction. Practice this for a couple of sets and you’ll feel the pecs more rock solid

than you ever felt after a set of dips.

One of the characteristics that peo-ple often comment about on me, are

my delts. They ask me what exercises I do, hoping that I’ll tell them I’m doing some kind of special, secret bodyweight

exercise. But as always, my response is that “there are no secret exercises - just get stronger at Handstand Push-ups…”. Getting strong at vertical pushing ex-ercises is the fastest way to build the shoulders. For starters, it’s what you have to place most of your focus on.

14 Mind Over Muscle

Ok, maybe there is one more extra secret to build-ing strong, bulky and shredded One of the charac-teristics that people often comment about on me, are my delts. They ask me what exercises I do,

hoping that I’ll tell them I’m doing some kind of special, secret bodyweight exercise. But as always, my response is that “there are no secret exercises - just get stronger at Handstand Push-ups…”. Getting strong at vertical pushing exercises is the fastest way to build the shoulders. For starters, it’s what you have to place most of your focus on. Ok, maybe there is one more extra secret to building strong, bulky and shredded superhero shoulders with cal-isthenics. This secret is actually more of a combination of things than something specific. During almost all of the exercises of this book, your shoulders are receiving a respectable amount of tension as secondary targeted muscles. Take, for example, one-arm push-ups (or progres-sions of these) and dips. These exercises demand a lot of stabilization through the shoulders. Another exercise that places a lot of tension on the posterior deltoid are inverted rows. Even our lower-body exercise – weighted lunges, re-quires a large amount of stabilization in the shoulder. So, although Handstand Push-ups (HSPUs) are the base upon which amazing shoulders are built – the rest of this work-out’s exercises will lead to supplementary muscle-growth as well…

In summary: Shoulders receive so much overall tension in this program, that you don’t need more than one shoul-der-specific exercise (Handstand Push-ups) to build them up effectively.

Besides HSPU’s, ripped shoulders are a by-product of high volume bodyweight training with exercises like Dips, One-arm Push-ups and Inverted rows

Handstand Push-ups (HSPU): The queen of bodyweight exercisesIf pull-ups are the king of bodyweight exercises, then the handstand push-up (HSPU) is certainly the queen. No, it’s not an easy exercise to master, but the results you’ll begin experiencing once you are able to do it are tremendous.If you’re a beginner with HSPUs, get started with Pike push-ups with your feet on an elevated surface, before you move on to the basic technique of the exercise. No matter which variation of HSPUs you’ll be doing, the same principles below apply in both exercises. Getting strong enough to perform a normal HSPU might take anywhere between a couple of weeks to a couple of months. Height and weight are variables that will affect this, since the taller and heavier you are the more time it will take.

Don’t be hasty with this exercise because you’ll be flirting with shoulder injuries in no time. Personally, when I first got started on HSPUs, I had extremely weak shoulders. But five months later (after working patiently on progressions) I could finally master 5 good reps. And that’s when my shoulders began to transform.

Muscles used: The prime targeted muscles of the HSPUs are the shoulders. Other than the shoulders the HSPU also works the arms. Trust me, it can do wonders, especially for the tricep department. As I said previously, superhe-ro arms are a by-product of all the upper body exercises in the Superhero Home-Workout. And HSPUs are a very important one. So let’s get started on those HSP tips now!

MST tips for Handstand Push-ups (HSPU)1. Scapular depression and retraction (SDR): HSPUs

should be done in perfect sync with SDR. SDR keeps your shoulders in a more injury-free position, since lack of it can put too much stress on shoulder nerves and lead to shoulder impingement.

2. Pause at the bottom of the movement: This tip is for very advanced people, since the HSPU is already an extremely challenging exercise as it is. By pausing at the bottom position of the rep you’re eliminating the rebound effect we talked about earlier. Just pause for a brief moment – maintain focus on SDR – and start pushing up again.

3. Push the floor away through your shoulders: This is a mental cue that helps keep the focus on the shoul-ders. A typical mistake in this exercise is moving the MMC from your shoulders to your arms. To avoid this, instead of thinking “I’m pushing my body up with my hands” think “I’m pushing the floor away through my shoulders”. This might sound a bit complicated at first, but it will make sense after practicing a few sets.

Note 1: It’s ok to cheat by rebounding a little bit at the bottom of this exercise if you’re fairly new to it. I’ll repeat that, HSPUs take time to be performed properly!

Note 2: In most exercises, I emphasize more stuff like switching on the targeted muscle and avoiding locking out the elbows. But with HSPUs, I’ve found that these tips require extremely advanced people (such as profession-al gymnasts). Also, if you’re not careful enough they can also put unnecessary stress on the shoulders. And since shoulders are a high-injury risk area, this is something I advise you to avoid. Simply standing on your arms during the handstand position and maintaining SDR is enough of a stimulus for many people.

Building those superhero Shoulders

15Mind Over Muscle

Building that Superhero Back

A wide solid back is a part of every superhero’s physique. One simply cannot look strong if he has

a narrow back. Before we dive into the back building exercises of this book, let me make an im-portant distinction here. A wide back isn’t only a matter of… well, having a wide back. It’s also a matter of strong, built-up shoulders.

No matter how much you strengthen your back, your frame (bones) won’t become any longer (unless you’re still developing as a teenager). Yes, adding muscle tissue on parts of the back like the lats and traps, will help you a lot with that wide and v-shaped back. But if you want a perfect V-shape, you’re going to also need a pair of strong bulky shoulders. The shoulders are the final upper layer of that V-shape. Building them up can give the illusion of an even wider back.

In summary: The superhero back is not just about strong ripped back muscles. A big part of it also relies on strong bulky shoulders, which give the illusion of an even wider back.

a) Pull-ups: The king of upper bodyweight exercisesThe pull-up is a phenomenal exercise for building the back. Yet a lot of people only feel it in their arms. By using the right MST (muscle specific tension) you’ll be feeling your back growing in no time. Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean your arms won’t be getting adequate muscle gains as well. It simply means you’ll be getting more back gains on top of the arm gains! Pull-ups target the lats, which cover a big part of your back, as shown in the picture below.

Pull-up MST techniques:Since this is the first pulling exercise I’ll be introducing MST techniques, lets first get started with a video where I talk about the three most important MST tips. Once you’re finished studying the video read the complete tips below. Repetition is the mother of learning, so don’t be lazy when it comes to studying and perfecting MST techniques!

1. Pump those wings (switch the muscle on):a) From a standing position, take your left arm and

place it on the upper part of your lat. As shown in the left photo below, this is just below the armpit (slightly below nipple height) and next to your upper ribs. Don’t worry if you can’t feel it yet.b) Now roll your shoul-

der (the one above your hand) up, back and down.

You'll feel your lat contract now.

This happens because the lats originate from the lower part of your back and go all the way up into your humerous (upper arm bone), close to the shoulder. So by contracting, they pull the shoulder down.

2. Scapular depression and retrac-tion (SDR): From a hanging posi-tion (before starting to pull yourself up) activate SDR. By doing this, your head should elevate above your shoulders and your chest should open up and face a bit more up-wards.

3. Pull your elbows to your ribs: It is natural for your mind to focus on bringing your head to the bar, pulling with your hands. What you want to do though, is to override that natural inclination, and put all

16 Mind Over Muscle

your focus on bringing the elbows to your ribs.4. Chest to bar baby! Don't count a rep as completed if

you don't touch your upper chest on the bar. It's that top position where you get a peak contraction of all those back muscles.

5. Pause at the top position: Combine all the previous steps while bringing your chest to the bar, and once you reach that top position - pause for a brief moment, giving your back muscles a good squeeze

6. Controlling the movement on the way back: Al-ways lower yourself down slowly by actively controlling the motion. This is important not just for keeping your joints safe, but to also take full advantage of the whole rep for maximum muscle growth. Besides the positive phase of an exercise (in this case pulling) the nega-tive phase (going down) is also responsible for a large amount of muscle growth.

Inverted rows: The forgotten pulling bodyweight ex-erciseInverted rows build that upper half of your back, specifically the muscles between your shoulder blades. They also contrib-ute to the back portion of the shoulder (posterior delts). The horizontal pull is a functional, primal movement that body-weight exercise enthusiasts quite often neglect. In order to build a strong, sculpted and symmetrical back you need the right amount of both horizontal and vertical pulling strength. Balancing these two movements will also help you fine-tune your posture. The best exercise to incorporate this movement

into your routine, is inverted rows. Inv. Rows might not be as sexy as Pull-ups, but it’s an amazing exercise with a ton of supplementary benefits, such as better posture and shoulder health (you can read more about these here).

MST tips for Inverted rows1. Switch on the targeted muscle: Switching

on the targeted muscle before you initiate an inverted row is easy, since we’ve already been doing it in all the previous exercises. You just have to depress and retract the scapulas (SDR).

2. Pause at the top of the rep: Pause for a brief moment at the top of the movement and give your shoulder blades a good squeeze. This is where SDR should reach peak contraction. Make sure your chest reaches hand level.

3. Controlling the movement on the way back: Always lower yourself down slowly by actively controlling the motion.

4. Decline inverted rows: Adding a bit of a de-cline angle is something I also recommend with this exercise, when you’re strong enough.

5. Practice, Practice, Practice: Depending on your strength, choose how many of the tips above you’re ready to apply to your technique. As you get stronger, keep on adding tips and refining your overall technique.

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This book does not over-train legs since I be-lieve that it would be counterproductive to achieving the superhero look. Yes, I do believe that leg training is important – which is why

you’ll be doing weighted lunges every single day. But the total volume of leg training will be lower than the upper-body volume. Here is why:

1. Superhero symmetry: Overtraining legs and making them extremely bulky, will cause your upper-body to look smaller (and in my opinion also a bit more feminine). Strong dense legs that are not too bulky, on the other hand, will make you appear taller (I’m a short guy so yeah I like that). It will also supplement that V-shape look. Remem-ber, proportion and symmetry is a big part of the superhero physique…

2. Total recovery: Reason #2 I don’t go crazy on legs is that overdoing it with lower body training, can impair upper body growth. Re-covery is not only individual for each mus-cle/muscle group. It’s also collective, in terms of how your central nervous system becomes depleted by your total training volume.

Think of it this way, your central nervous system is like a big battery, and every muscle group takes en-ergy out of that battery. Guess which muscle group is the biggest drainer of this battery? Yup, the legs. I’ve found that keeping your total leg training volume at about 15-20% of the whole program, can make a big difference in whole-body recovery rates. This allows a bit more training volume for the upper body, which also means more upper body muscle-growth.

Weighted Lunges: A functional, whole body, mus-cle-building and fat burning exercise!Weighted lunges are not only a great exercise to build a pair of strong and functional legs. By adding a weighted backpack on your shoulder, you activate muscles of the upper body and increase the metabolic effect of the exercise (more calories burned). Your side abs (oblique) will also get a great workout in this exercise. Using both upper and lower body muscle groups in one exercise creates a lot of oxygen debt,

which means that you’re also going to be doing some serious breathing!

It’s basically a functional, whole-body, muscle-build-ing, high intensity and high calorie-burning exercise! Yet, since we’re focusing on the legs, MST (Muscle Specific Tension) techniques should be applied here as well.

Note: Making a weighted backpack is a piece of cake. I’ve created a detailed tutorial over here (blogpost) and here (video).

Glute activation importanceGlutes, in a way, are the shoulder blades of the low-er body. What I mean, is that when these powerful muscles are activated, everything works better and you avoid common squatting problems (such as knee pain). It is essential to maintain that MST on the glutes during squatting movements, in order to keep knees safe, and for the rest of the leg-muscles to fire properly.

Mind to muscle tips for weighted lunges1. Glute activation: First you have to learn to

fire the glutes in a rested position with your knee bent. All you need is a chair to sit on with your knee bent at a regular 90-degree angle. Now point your toes a tiny bit upward and fire up/squeeze that glute. At first you can place your hand (sit on it) below your glute in order to feel and get better feedback from it. Do this whenever you’re sitting, until you can do it any time on cue. As men we don’t really care about glute gains but trust me, your girlfriend/wife will thank me in the near future.

2. Keep your awareness on your glutes and quads: The quadriceps, just like the shoul-ders don’t require extreme isolated muscle contraction. A common problem with squat-ting patterns is knee pain, which is caused to a large extent by lack of activation of the glutes. By simply keeping the glutes fired up your quadriceps will switch on as well. Keep

Building those superhero legs

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your awareness on both muscles, focusing on the glutes a bit more in the lowering phase, and the quads a bit more in the pushing phase.

3. Pause at the bottom of the movement: By pausing at the bottom position of the rep, you’re eliminating the rebound effect and you don’t over-stress the knee joint. Simply rest on the front foot and back knee for a brief moment.

Note: Make sure you have a pillow, a mattress or a very soft rug on the area where the knee of your back leg touches the ground.

4. Push up – don’t push back: When you’re pushing back-wards instead of up-wards, you’ll be cheat-ing the pushing motion of your front leg, by lean-ing and pushing with the toes of the back leg. What you want is to push yourself upwards vertically. This way you can focus all your weight on the main targeted leg and its muscles.

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Here are some “secrets” a lot of people don’t know, or simply ignore, when it comes to carving a good set of ripped abs:1st of all abs are made in the kitchen: You can train

abs all you want, but if you don’t go below 14% body fat, your abs will never show up, no matter what you do, or how you train.2nd abs are a by-product of strengthening the whole-body through compound bodyweight exercises. The great benefit of bodyweight exercise is its additional core activation with every exercise.3rd the ab-look one can attain differs and depends on his body-type: What I mean is that a six-pack shouldn’t be your initial goal if you’re the Captain America body type. A power-ful superhero-looking 4-pack, on the other hand, is attainable if you stay true to this workout plan. Remember, by building that proportional V-shape we’ve been talking about, you’ll look even more ripped than ever before!

Rotational trainingAn important movement that gets commonly ignored is rota-tional movement. Especially if you’ve been training for more than a year with bodyweight exercise (BWE), and you’ve mas-tered the basics, this is an important movement you should defi-nitely incorporate into your program. My choice of exercise for rotational training is woodchoppers. You can see here (when I first started doing this exercise), how challenging it can be for someone new to it. Not only for the core and abs, but for the whole body.

Benefits of rotational training• Core Functionality: Your core consists of a lot of

muscles which are designed to work in sync. Some of the best movements to teach these muscles to cooperate with each other are rotational movements such as the woodchop-per.

• Lower back health: Choppers teach your core muscles to work in harmony and strengthen your lower back. This helps prevent lower back issues – one of the most common musculoskeletal problems people have.

• Hip mobility: It can also open up the hip-muscle-complex,

Carving thosesuperhero abs

which starts to tighten up after training too long in restricted planes of motion (sagittal & frontal).

The core as a muscle group: The abs are part of what is considered a bigger muscle group: The core. All the muscles of the core have to work in sync in this exercise. In this exercise, we will fo-cus more on general mind-to-muscle connection techniques instead of MST.

Activating your natural corset: The Trans-

versus abdominis

The TVA, a forgotten abdominal muscle, is your deepest abdominal wall. Some even call it God’s natural weight belt. Imagine it as an inner corset, that begins from the lower part of your spine and wraps around your stomach. Every time you pull your belly inwards you contract the TVA muscle concentrically (reducing its size). In combination with engaging your pelvic floor*, you also tighten the base of your core, which will help tighten your abs from all angles.

*The pelvic floor is the sling (in simple words) of your genital muscles which is spans the area underneath the pelvis.

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Movement preven-tion over Movement produc-tion: Allowing a smooth return after executing the chopping (positive) motion of rep is

crucial. In order

to properly activate your

core and keep your back safe, you must be

able to execute the remaining (negative) phase of the repetition with control and

grace.

Keep tension on the band: Don’t allow

the band to completely lose tension when you complete the movement. There has to always be some tension on it so that your core is always

activated during the whole exercise.

Note for arm technique: Keep the elbows a bit bent, because keeping

them completely straight might irri-tate your shoulders after a certain point.

A simple way to activate the pelvic floor is to think of the muscle activation you would use to pause uri-nation (no need to exaggerate this contraction, just switch those muscles on). Give it a try and, through touch, you can notice your pelvic floor muscles turn-ing on. If stabilization of your legs is also required, then bracing your glutes, in combination with all the above, will help create rigidity and stiffness around the midsection.

Why woodchoppers? Woodchopers will help tone your abs, but they won’t add too much bulk to the abdominal area. And since a very important aspect of the superhero physique is symmetry and proportion, an extremely bulky set of abs would be counterpro-ductive to the superhero V-shape.

Woodchopper benefits: First of all, woodchoppers improve the function of your abs by training your core as a whole, and they activate that inner corset abdominal muscle (TVA), which is important for the superhero ab-look. Second and most importantly, woodchoppers, just like weighted lunges, are another functional, whole-body, muscle-building, high inten-sity and high calorie-burning exercise! The oxygen debt this exercise creates, through instability of the lower and upper body, is phenomenal! Gasping for air and wiping off the sweat from your face during that last third set, will help you understand this better…

Summary: Abs are a by-product of Bodyweight ex-ercises. Woodchoppers will add some toning to your abs, but it will mostly increase their functionality, stimulate that V-shape, and as a high metabolic exer-cise it will burn off that last layer of fat you’ve been struggling to get rid of!

Mind to muscle techniques for WoodchoppersBrace your core: Activate your TVA by pulling your belly button a bit inwards and by engaging your pel-vic floor (think of the muscle activation of your pros-tate when you want to pause peeing).

Initiate the movements from the core not the arms: Imagine your arms as mechanical limbs that are simply fixed in a straight line. Then, initiate and control the movement from a tight core.

Pause for a brief moment: Once you complete half of the chopping motion (180 degrees), before return-ing back, pause a brief moment. This will help avoid loss of control caused by the band’s elastic reflex on the way back.