Overcoming the Weight Lifting Mental Barrier

The weight lifting mental barrier is something that is very hard to overcome for many people.

When I talk about the mental barrier, I am talking about the time during your exercise that you just want to give up because it's just too heavy or too hard to do another rep.

Your brain is so much stronger than you believe.

You can't let your brain win during hard weight lifting workouts. You've got to put up a good fight.

Don't let your brain talk you out of muscle gains.

And just because that rhymes, I'm going to put it within its own special quotes:

Don't let your brain talk you out of muscle gains.

Each experienced weight lifter has his/her own way of blocking out their minds when it gets down to the tough reps on any given exercise.

The experienced lifters who know how to build muscle know that these reps are the most important for building muscle. You have got to learn how to block out the signals your brain is giving you to give up and stop the set.

Don't Stop: You've Got a Few More Reps in You!!!

I guarantee that many of you stop at least a few reps short of failure and believe that you've reached total failure.

On many of the WLC weight training workouts, you won't be going to complete failure but for some of the more important workouts you most likely will reach failure.

Even on some of the easier workouts, your brain may still kick in at some point and tell you to quit.

You need to find your way of blocking out the brain and telling yourself that YOU WILL GET THE REPS no matter what.

Some Of My Personal Methods for Overcoming the Mental Barrier

I'm going to talk about some of the methods I use.

I want you to know that once you finally learn how to overcome the weight lifting mental barrier, you will find your groove and you will start getting much stronger and building more muscle.

I am 100 percent serious when I say that you need to work on beating your mental barrier each and every workout.

Have you ever heard of those superhuman feats of strength by people when they are in life and death situations? People have lifted cars, tractors, and trucks to save lives.

I know that we all have strength inside of us that we could never imagine. I like to think of all this extra strength I have when the reps get tough, and I just keep going.

I like to think life or death when trying to get more reps. I get a little crazy when lifting weights, but it works and it's fun.

I make every tough rep during my exercises a competition that I will not lose.

I will complete the rep. And I will do another rep. I will win. I will get stronger. I think positive, and I make sure that I improve.

I don't like to lose, and I do all that I can to beat the weights. There's always more weight, so I'll never run out of competition but I make each rep my competition.

And I win no matter what!

Weight lifting music is another technique I use to help me beat the weight lifting mental barrier. I love to use music that takes me back to a moment in my life that inspired me to work harder or a moment that gave me lots of energy.

I use this to tap into that superhuman strength I talked about earlier during life and death situations.

I've done a lot of hard work in my life, and I've witnessed a lot of hard work. I think back on these times through the music. I tell myself I will work harder and get better.

Hard work leads to success! All of this thinking happens during the tough reps.

I also like to think about building muscle while I am fighting through the tough reps.

I like to visualize the muscle working and getting bigger. I tell myself that if I get another few reps that I will build muscle.

I take muscle building very seriously, as you can see by my website here, and there's no way I'm losing some muscle building opportunities just because my brain tells me to quit.

I don't quit anything. And you need the same attitude to get results.

I want to discuss one of the more extreme things I do. I sometimes use this method when working my calves.

I have bad genetics for calves, but that has never stopped me from building them and bringing them up to the rest of my body. Building calves can be very tough work for many people.

It is very painful, and I never stop until I can't stand the pain any more. Well, when this pain gets unbearable, I simply laugh at the pain.

I workout at home so I don't look crazy to other people. But, pain really is in your head. You can control pain by blocking it out. If you have bad genetics for calves and want to build them, you better learn to block out pain.

The weight lifting mental barrier really shows up during calf training.

Practice Finding Your Own Methods

Try some of my methods of blocking out the weight lifting mental barrier and let me know if they work for you.

Try laughing at the pain. It's fun and crazy.

Find your own methods and share them with me. You really do need to work on this if you want to build muscle in the near future.

There will be a time where you will have to fight for the reps and fight for the new muscle you want to build. Defeat the mental barrier during each and every workout. Get strong in your mind and your body.