Are Your Beliefs Affecting Your Training?

"To believe or not to believe, that is the question..."

Let's talk a little about your beliefs... What are beliefs? A belief is our programming, our values, our system to understand ourselves and the world around us. In many ways you become your beliefs. If a person believes that he is fat, he has just created that future reality. Many of my clients will say "But Shawn, in the present I am fat..." Yes, this is true, but are you that way in the future?

How you view yourself is critical for you to begin to change your body. By constantly stating your present reality, in many ways you are creating a future one. The mind does not necessarily see the distinction between the future and the present.

Please begin to observe your thoughts, but don't accept your negative thoughts - Dismiss them. Say to yourself, "that's exactly what's not going to happen!" or just say "stop!".

Negative thoughts about anything in life can be crippling, especially when it comes to creating your ideal body.

Let's talk about how powerful your mind is. Have you heard of the fact the scientist believe we use 10% of our brain or less? Have you heard of self fulfilling prophecies or the placebo effect? Both are related to a person's beliefs about a future occurrence or event. Both are well documented by Science and by Human Experience. Why do they occur? Is it because as we believe something, we are creating our future. Our mind is extremely powerful, more than you can possibly imagine or give yourself credit for.

How powerful is the mind? Well, let me tell you a funny story. It's funny because when I train my clients I emphasize that we have to train to the "point-of-exhaustion" or close to the "point-of-exhaustion" in order for them to attain results. It's interesting because when my clients train, they push themselves to the point-of-exhaustion and then stop.

Well, sometimes I assist my clients, I call it the "magic fingers trick" So, what I do is pretend that I'm helping them lift a weight when they have reached the point of exhaustion.

For instance, one of my female clients is performing the bench press. I would say, "Ok, let's shoot for 8 repetitions". She begins to get her first few repetitions and then she gets close to the "point-of-exhaustion" at, let's say the 5th repetition and needs assistance.

So what do I do (laughing on the inside), I "pretend" like I'm helping her. It's funny because I'll literally put 4 fingers on the bar to help her, two fingers from one hand and two fingers from the other hand. Do you know what happens? She does another 3 repetitions because she actually thinks that I'm helping... and I'm not...This is one illustration of the power of the mind...

"Believe that you can change your body and you can. Believe that you can't and you may have that too if you like..."

If you would like more health and fitness tips please go to www.shawnphillipstraining.com. Shawn