Mind Power

Vlad · #1 03-28-2005, 12:01 PM

A funny thing happened to me today. My gym was closed (Easter). So me and my trainingspartner went to another gym - I dislike it. Too many whackos who only train curls n bench, seriously, it's not funny. When you enter the freeweightroom the first thing you see is 15 people pumping their biceps and exchanging dumbbells back and forth and 15 more around the benchpress. A sad show to watch.

Anyway, I was going to do 3 reps with 75 pounds dumbbells in 45 degrees Incline, then 3 more at 80 and 3 more at 85 (was supposed to be my 3-4 RM max)

Dumbbells look different compared to the ones we have at our gym, so something went wrong in my head (surprise) and I grabbed 95 pounders without noticing it. My trainingparter noticed it, but thought this was my gameplan, altough he also was a bit confused since I said I was goinf ro 85.

So, I lay down, bring those things to the chest and rep out 3 easy reps (could have done 4), tell myself - good work Vladde, 85 pounders not so bad for incline...do my chest and etc and we go home..we talk about the workout and i say something blah blah 85..and he says, not it was 95...I'm like..wait a second..ohh crappish..

THe moral of the story, my mind were tricked so my max went up 20 pounds lol. The funniest thing is that THEY FELT LIKE 85. This is incredible. I'm shocked.

XenoWang · #2 03-28-2005, 12:05 PM

That's awesome man!

Not to take anything away from that though, but how different were the dumbbells? I know there is a significant difference between the weights I can push between regular dumbells such as these:

and these:

Vlad · #3 03-28-2005, 12:13 PM

I was also thinking about it, the only difference is colour and unknown envirment. I spend like 2 minutes looking for the dumbbells, because of all the people around the stacks and different placement. So I got probably pissed off and grabbed whatever looked like 85 =)

MansonOzz · #4 03-28-2005, 12:14 PM

Been there done that! Doesn't it feel good to not worry about that extra weight? LOL. I once loaded an extra 20lbs. on a bar for incline skullcrushers. During the set I was wondering why it felt so heavy, but had no idea I overloaded it. I was quite happy [img]/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

XenoWang · #5 03-28-2005, 12:18 PM

Well to the topic at hand- we psyche ourselves out more than we realize most of the time. I remember going to the gym half an hour early, waiting around for my training partner. I planned on thinking and visualizing my deadlifts for the day because I really wanted to hit some PRs but I ended up thinking about it so much that I had one of my worst deadlift days of my life [img]/forum/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

The lesson of the story is: don't think, just lift! (with good form of course [img]/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img])

Kühn · #6 03-28-2005, 12:55 PM

This reminds me back in the days of high school at parties. There is this one guy, we where serving mixing his drinks with water all not, no alcohol or anything. But as time passed he was getting (what appeared) be drunk, and not a single drop of alcohol entered his system [img]/forum/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

Venom · #7 03-28-2005, 01:03 PM

Awesome!

Vlad · #8 03-28-2005, 01:42 PM

Must be that extra large pizza I ordered yesterday, which by the way was followed by a pack of extraordinary cookies. (prebed meal) Cleanbulk Vlad-style! Yu-Gi-Oh!

LoL at the alcohol!

MC-JayCore · #9 03-28-2005, 06:37 PM

This reminds me of being in the gym with my training partner one day, and between sets of lunges we started talking about all this stuff of the infinite power of the mind and how we set our own limitations by deciding what we can or can't do. So he has this epiphany, and decides he can lunge more than he was doing- so he grabs DB's almost double the weight to what he was previously doing, and precedes to hit a perfect set. Like the mum's who manage to lift up cars when their babies are trapped inside after an accident- they just don't think of the possibilty they could fail.

The mind is your strongest muscle.

book · #10 03-28-2005, 07:15 PM

[ QUOTE ]
This reminds me of being in the gym with my training partner one day, and between sets of lunges we started talking about all this stuff of the infinite power of the mind and how we set our own limitations by deciding what we can or can't do. So he has this epiphany, and decides he can lunge more than he was doing- so he grabs DB's almost double the weight to what he was previously doing, and precedes to hit a perfect set. Like the mum's who manage to lift up cars when their babies are trapped inside after an accident- they just don't think of the possibilty they could fail.

The mind is your strongest muscle.

[/ QUOTE ]

So true..

Also I just finished reading Arnold: An education for a bodybuilder and man does that guy have the mindset of a champion...extremely arrogrant...but hey it got him a sandow when he was 24 or 25 I believe.