Does the Mind-Muscle Connection Help Build More Muscle?

Does the mind-muscle connection help build more muscle? Bodybuilders have advocated the mind-muscle connection for maximizing muscle growth.

The mind-muscle connection for those who don't know, is aiming to consciously squeeze and maximally activate a particular muscle during an exercise.

Can this technique help you build more muscle?

There are two direct papers we can use to help us answer this question.

This first study is by Counts et al.

13 untrained individuals had one arm assigned to a no-load condition and their other arm assigned to a high load condition.

Both arms were trained 3X per week for 6 weeks.

The no-load condition arm performed a bicep curl with no weight but they aimed to squeeze & maximally contract the biceps for 4 sets of 20 reps.

The high load condition performed a dumbbell biceps curl with 70% of their one-rep max for 4 sets of 8-12 reps.

Biceps thickness was measured at 50, 60, and 70% of the upper arm length.

At all 3 regions of the biceps, increases in thickness were similar between the two conditions.

Therefore, biceps curls with no load, but squeezing and maximall activating the biceps resulted in similar gains to regular dumbbell curls.

This study didn't explicitly test the mind-muscle connection. But it suggests that squeezing a muscle (basis of the mind-muscle connection) can result in significant gains.

Now, can doing this during a loaded exercise enhance hypertrophy?

This is second paper by Schoenfeld et al. helps us.

27 untrained men were split into an internal focus group or external focus group.

Both groups trained the biceps curl and leg extension for 4 sets of 8-12 reps, 3X per week for 10 weeks.

the internal focus group focused on squeezing the targeted muscle.

The external focus group was told to focus on getting the weight up.

Thickness of the elbow flexors, rectus femoris, and vastus lateralis were measured before and after.

The internal focus group experienced significantly greater increases in elbow flexor thickness compared to the external focus group. But increases in thickness for the rectus femoris & vastus lateralis were similar between both groups.

So, the mind-muscle connection did seem to enhance growth for the elbow flexors, but not for the quadriceps.

Why might the mind-muscle connection not benefit the quads?

Several participants found it easier to focus on the biceps versus the quads.

The participants in this study were untrained, with training experience, developing a mind-muscle connection with the quads may be possible. This may be able to result in greater growth. Future research would be required to validate this idea.

So, there is evidence that the mind-muscle connection can help build more muscle.

Single-joint exercises may be the most practical and easiest type of movement to apply the mind-muscle connection too.

The mind-muscle connection could still work with multi-joint exercises, but probably with the use of lighter loads.

A paper by Calatayud et al. demonstrates this. They found that focusing on the chest during bench presses with 20, 40, and 60% one-rep max did increase chest electrical activity, measured via electromyography, compared to not using the mind-muscle connection. This same logic also applied to focusing on the triceps.

But when subjects used 80% one-rep max on the bench press, the mind-muscle connection did not increase electrical activity for either the chest or triceps.

With heavy loads, it would be difficult to focus on a particular muscle, as your attention would be directed towards just moving the load.

With lighter loads, it would be much easier to direct your attention to a particular muscle.

Given lighter loads are likely better for using the mind-muscle connection, strength development will likely be less.

Getting strong on some exercises is a goal for many people. If this applies to you, for the most part, it's probably best to avoid using the mind-muscle connection on any of these exercises, and rather just focus on using heavier loads.

Conclusion:

With single-joint upper body exercises, there is evidence the mind-muscle connection can help build more muscle.

With single-joint lower body exercises, you may wish to try and develop a mind-muscle connection with your lower body, this may help build more muscle.

With upper/lower multi-joint exercises, the mind-muscle connection could work with lighter loads, so you may wish to experiment with this. But note strength gains will likely suffer in the long run, but if your goal is only to maximize muscle hypertrophy, this is fine.
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References:
Counts et al. - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27329...
Schoenfeld et al. - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29533...
Calatayud et al. - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26700...