Hail to the Dinosaurs!
Over the past week or so, I've been
giving you a series of articles called
"Strength Training Secrets."
If you missed the first four of the series,
you can find them on the Dinosaur Training
Blog. The link to the Blog is on the home
page of my website -- go to the home page
of the Dinosaur Training website and look
for the link button in the navigation bar
at the top of the page. (It's at the far
right of the navigation bar.)
I put all of my daily email messages on the
Blog, so if you ever miss an email message,
you can find it on the Blog.
Now -- to continue a topic from the last
post in the Strength Training Secrets
series -- let's talk a bit more about a
very important topic: visualization.
In his book, Championship Weightlifting,
two-time Olympic champion and six-time World
Weightlifting Champion Tommy Kono discuses
the importance of visualization for weight-
lifters and other athletes.
He notes that in the early 1970's, the USA
gymnastics team was far behind the teams from
other countries, most of whom had their athletes
practice for 6 to 8 hours per day, performing
hundreds of "reps" of each gymnastic movement.
The American team members were high school and
college athletes, and there just weren't enough
in the day to put in that kind of training.
So their coaches began a special program of
visualization drills, where the athletes simply
sat quietly and watched a mental movie where they
performed each movement over and over.
They spent half their training time on visualization
and half their time on physical drills.
And they improved so rapidly that they amazed all
of their competitors in the World Championships and
the Olympic Games.
Tommy Kono believes that visualization is an
important part of QUALITY TRAINING.
He notes:
"Because of my training alone during my
developmental years in the sport, I unconsciously
went over the lifts in my mind between my reps,
sets, and between my workouts. I was aware of what
was the correct movement. I visualized and even
performed the lifting movements without weights
in some of my spare moments.
Perhaps this was the reason I was able to minimize
my time lifting weights and still showed as much
or even more improvement than those who spent more
time training on the lifting platform than I did."
I cover visualization in detail in Dinosaur Training.
If you have a copy, pull it out and reread the chapters
on the mental aspects of training. If you don't have
a copy, grab one now. Visualization is one of the keys
to getting a great workout -- and getting one great
workout after another is the Royal Road to Strength
Training Success.
Yours in strength,
Brooks Kubik
P.S. You can find Dinosaur Training right here:
http://www.brookskubik.com/dinosaur_training.html
P.S. My other books and courses are right here --
remember that you save on shipping when you order two
or more at the same time:
http://www.brookskubik.com/products.html
