One of the most powerful safe muscle building secrets is visualization. In fact, some studies have reported that subjects who visualize exercising a muscle everyday increase their strength about half as much as the subjects who actually performed exercise everyday. Not too bad for sitting around thinking about exercise.
Properly performed visualization training requires that you focus on your five senses. For weight lifting or other exercise the two senses you will want to focus on the most are touch and sight. Close your eyes and imagine the feel of the equipment in your hands. Imagine what you see when you are performing a particular exercise. Think about how your muscles feel as you perform your exercise.
You will also focus on hearing to a lesser degree, and possibly even smell. Imagine the sounds and smell of the gym. Hopefully you don't eat the exercise equipment, so taste shouldn't be much of a factor in your visualization.
There are two basic types of visualization, first-person and third-person. First-person visualization tends to be the most effective form. Picture yourself in your own body, not outside of your body watching yourself. Imagine the inputs from all of your senses as you go through an exercise. Imagine using more weight or doing more reps than you ever have before. Imagine being successful.
You will find that the more you perform visualization training the better you will become at it. You will also find that you don't have the same mental roadblocks to performance that you once had now that you have successfully performed an exercise so many times in your head.
This is not as cool as trying the latest supplement or piece of exercise equipment, but it's cheaper and one of the best safe muscle building secrets. The reason that more people don't use it is that it takes some time and effort to do properly. However, if you are really serious about achieving your goals I don't think you'll mind the extra time and effort once you see the results.
Remember that visualization is not a substitute for actually exercising, but it is a great way to augment a properly designed training and nutrition program.
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