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Fadi

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No one here is saying don't think, but there's a time for thinking and a time for lifting. Before you approach the bar, go ahead and think all you like (if that makes you feel better), however once your hands make a connection with that bar, it's business time.

In fact, if you really want to improve your lifting, then begin to practice not thinking deliberately. Have you seen how some Olympic weightlifters take to that smelling salt just before stepping out onto the lifting platform? What's in that salt? Did you think it was a substance that made the lifter start thinking, or would the exact opposite be more true, like clearing his head from thinking?


What's even worse, is when you begin thinking during your lifting. That is a sure recipe for failure. I've seen it way too many times I've lost count.

Back to the smelling salts. These are basically ammonia. You take a deep sniff of the stuff; the vapor travels up your nostrils and enters your sinus cavity, where ammonia reacts with water and becomes ammonium hydroxide, causing a pH shock to the nerves and cells lining your sinuses. This shock sends a message to your brain that it's "under attack", where in turn your brain signals for the production of that fight or fight chemical we know as adrenaline. Well we all know what adrenaline does or how it affects our CNS. Your muscles contract with greater force, whist your perception to pain falls, all leading to a better chance of a successful lift to come.

Of course, not everyone is into smelling salts (I wasn't), but the idea of this shock to your system ought to divert your thinking pattern from wherever it may be and instead, have you throw your focus onto the task at hand: lifting that bar.

So, go ahead and think all you like, but know when to stop your thinking and begin your lifting, as the two definitely don't go together. Am I sure of that? No I'm not; I'm actually certain of that fact, just if I ask you now to think of a cow....

...did your brain think of a lion? No, it was an image of a cow that your brain created, no ifs and no buts about it, unless you've got a problem..., and I know you don't have a problem. So lifting to us, ought to be just like throwing a punch to a martial artist, we do it on automatic, based on practice and the repetitiveness of our training.
 
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