Maybe I should start using "The Secret" to attain my powerlifting dreams? Anyone remember that book/movie? I'm picturing myself with a 700lb squat in the 74 weight class... Gonna draw a picture of me doing it and stick it under my pillow later.
That is a great book/movie. My coach in BJJ always recommended for me to visualize myself succeeding in a match. And also visualize the success while saying how successful I would be out loud in an excited manner. I would also write down my goal on a paper and put it where I can see it everyday. Might sound ridiculous to some but I know it works when you really go to work on your goals. I've basically used this for obtaining many goals. Whether its getting an education, a job, a good wife, lifting a new weight, winning a competition, or whatever. There really is magic in believing.
Visualizing and goal setting are two valid thing for sure, but The Secret is full of so much magical thinking and woo-woo nonsense I can't even start tbh. I mean am I really supposed to believe that people get cancer because they're having negative thoughts? Good grief.
Claude M. Bristol wrote a book titled The Magic of Believing. If you haven't ever read it, I highly recommend it.
has a lot to do with
People don't commit when they don't believe. That's true in just about all aspects of life.
Positive psychology leads to real actions in the way that WhatWouldHulkDo said. The reverse is also true. People don't loot stores when the negative psychology of a likely arrest and incarceration loom over them.
Otherwise I agree tho. As long as bad things happen to good people I'll never have much faith in organized religion or magical thinking etc. There's no scientific basis for it. Of course positive thought might lead to positive actions or attract positive things and vice versa with negativity, but that's failing to take into account a whole hell of a lot of life is random and based on circumstances and luck. In the end the universe doesn't give a #%&$ about what you think about anything.
It makes me wonder about people who reportedly lift cars off of trapped friends in times of great stress. It is called "hysterical strength."
www.healthline.com
In other words it wasn't really his max. Lol
I know that's kind of a joke... but it is also kind of real. I think one thing competitive athletes definitely learn how to do it call up a jolt of adrenaline when they need it. Might not be lift-a-car strength, but it's a similar concept. To me, that's the difference between a "training max" and a true max - most of us don't want to have to call on adrenaline during day-to-day training.
Eddie Hall talked about the psychological stuff he did for his deadlift working with a psychologist and it was basically envisioning his family was trapped under something and he had to lift it off them to save them. Whether it was tapping into the exact same thing as the people who gain super human strength in actual life or death crisises I don't know but it was probably at least similar. With that said, that's probably not something you'd want to use very often because I'm sure it would tax your mental and physical health pretty bad. Lol
