Beyond pumping iron there is another kind of preparation for bodybuilding competition, a preparation just as important, and one that involves subtle factors concerning your attitude and mental approach to training and competition. You can achieve great things with your body if you learn how to use your mind. Learning to harness the power of your mind can advance your physical training a giant step further. It can also make the difference between winning and losing in competition.

Mind power and success through mind conditioning only comes with a sustained and sincere effort. You can't make a wish and hope that it comes true and forget about working on it. The mind reacts much the same way the body does. If you train and condition it regularly, it responds with great efficiency and effectiveness. On the other hand, if you assume, as so many bodybuilders do, that it's good enough the way it is, your chances of achieving your maximum potential are greatly diminished. If you had foolishly assumed that attitude about your body, you would never have entered the gym to train in the first place.

Some of the key ingredients to an effective mind conditioning program are 1) motivation, 2) incentive, 3) visualization, and, most important of all, 4) belief. You've gotta believe. You've gotta believe in yourself, in your talents and capabilities, in your goals and all you hope to achieve, and in your methods for achieving them.

The key to understanding what your mind holds in store for you is a simple realization. Realize that within you is all the power you need to succeed both in training and in competition. Within you is all the potential for success. Within you is the brain power of an infinitely superior person, physically, spiritually and mentally.

Once you make this realization -- that your mind holds a vast wealth of knowledge, information, control, power, ability and potential -- you can start to tap it. You can delve into your own secret depths and find out what you're really made of.


Motivation and Discipline for Mind Conditioning

Motivation is the state of mind that generates positive feelings about achieving a purpose. Some people are motivated by financial rewards, others by primitive urges for physical pleasure. For you, the most highly motivating element in your life MUST become your dream of acquiring unsurpassed, mind-blowing power and mass.

But to be motivated isn't enough. It also takes discipline. Discipline is what keeps you consistently scientific in your actions as you strive to achieve your goal.
Here is a simple step-by-step method to getting what you want:

Step 1:
Define your ultimate goals clearly and write them down. This means being specific about what you want. What kind of improvements are you looking for? Do you want simply to increase your overall strength, your lean body mass, or reduce your percent bodyfat? Or, is it the NPC Championships? The Olympia? Maybe you’re "of Iron" and chose POWERLIFTING to excel in! That, friend, is GOOD! Then concentrate specifically on the actual aspects you wish to improve, and write them down.

You'll be surprised at how much clearer you can make it by simply putting it in words. When you have to select the exact words to define what you want, you tend to develop a super-clear image of your goal.

Step 2:
Devise a series of short-term goals which will ultimately lead to realizing your main goals. It's easier to attain a short-term goal that's within reach than to try and make great leaps in progress all at once. When you try too much at once and fail, you tend to get discouraged.

Instead, set a number of short-term goals that you can accomplish and then knock them off one at a time. Focus exclusively on the short-term goal you wish to achieve most of all, not even thinking about the next short-term goal or the long run. Each one of your short-term goals should lead you to completion of your major goal. Each short-term goal is a stepping stone, not an end in itself. That's why they have to be accomplished one at a time. And as you complete each short-term goal, you will find that you are all the more motivated to continue your trek to greatness.

Step 3:
Create your strategy for success. This is your game plan, your INTEGRATED training program. On the same sheet that you wrote your long-term goal and listed the short-term goals that will get you there, you should break down your daily activities into the best means to get you where you're going. This means the routines, exercises, sets, reps, intensity, practice, rest periods, diet, naps, posing practice and so on.

Follow your own plan to success. Prepare a daily schedule that takes you in the direction you want to go, and recognize right from the start that you are a unique individual, and require a program that's necessarily different from anyone else's. Keep your goal sheet current and review it day by day.

A good place to start is with the "daily clocks" presented in this book. These daily clocks are devised to allow you to take advantage of all the various technologies science has to offer and -- at the same time -- allow you to thoroughly PERSONALIZE your goal-oriented training. So, the hardest part is already done for you!

Step 4:
Visualize yourself succeeding. No one would attempt to build a house without a set of blueprints. Likewise, you must plan your success strategy, and actually "see" yourself, in your mind's eye, accomplishing your goals.

Your inner feelings, your thoughts, your daydreams must all be filled with images of your ultimate success. Twice a day -- once after training and once before bedtime -- read your goal sheet out loud. Then close your eyes and with crystal clarity see yourself becoming exactly as you want to. But see yourself actually accomplishing your goals of acquiring great muscular size and proportioning, not just wistfully thinking about how nice it would be to look that way.

Step 5:
Align your mind, body and spirit with achievement. By affirming your commitment to your stated goals, and actually visualizing and verbalizing your commitment, you will find that your mind, body, spirit and emotional self all become one. The power of this union will send an emotional supercharge to your body by actually stimulating secretion of your body's "emotion-producing" biochemicals. The alignment is accomplished by actually verbalizing your commitment while visualizing it. For example, say, "I am committed to becoming the most massive and cut bodybuilder in history." Repeat your commitment statement before, during and after your success visualization every day.


Step 6:
Give yourself a reward for your accomplishments. After you've achieved a sub-goal or your ultimate goal(s), reward yourself in a significant fashion. I don't mean just having an ice cream cone after a contest peaking cycle! That's not significant enough to "anchor" the significance of your achievement firmly in your mind and soul. Personally dwell upon your achievement and your success. Congratulate yourself and savor the feelings of pride and confidence in having taken direct action to make yourself bigger and stronger.

The key to mental conditioning is to make your new thoughts and new approach a habit. The more regular your new habit becomes, the more quickly old and destructive habits fade away. The only way to continue making progress is to regularly reinforce your new, goal-directed integrated training.

It usually takes about three weeks to implement this revised way of thinking. During that time, you're likely to feel tempted to return to old patterns and habits, feeling that the old way was easier and "good enough."

Don't do it!

The more you resist old habits, the stronger you'll become, until you develop an iron will to succeed and you no longer even think about returning to old habits. Going back to your old mental habits would be akin to leaving the gym forever. Remember to create a goal, visualize it as real, and work regularly to successfully attain firm footing on each of the stepping stones that will take you to it. When you get there, you'll know.