Understanding the mind's role in motivation and behavior is
one of the most critical elements in fitness success. If
you struggle with changing habits and behaviors or if you
can't get motivated, then even the best training and
nutrition program is not much help.

A fascinating fact about your subconscious mind is that
it's completely deductive in nature. In other words, it's
fully capable of working backwards from the end to the
means. If you "program" only the desired outcome
successfully into your "mental computer," then your
subconscious will take over and help you find the
information and means and carry out the actions necessary
to reach it.

Many people are familiar with affirmations and goal-setting
as ways to give instructions to your subconscious mind. But
perhaps the ultimate mental training" technique is
visualization. In one respect, affirmation and
visualization are the same, because when you speak or think
an affirmation first, that triggers a mental image, being
as the human brain "thinks" in pictures.

You can use visualization to plant goals into your
subconscious mind. You simply close your eyes, use your
imagination and mentally create pictures and run movies of
your desired results. If repeated consistently with
emotion, mental images are accepted by your subconscious as
commands and this helps with changing habits, behavior and
performance.

Although there are some new and creative ways to use
visualization, (which you are about to learn), this is not
a new technique. Visualization has been used formally in
the fields of sports psychology and personal development
for decades and philosophers have discussed it for
centuries:

"If you want to reach your goal, you must 'see the
reaching' in your own mind before you actually arrive at
your goal."

- Zig Ziglar

"The use of mental imagery is one of the strongest and most
effective strategies for making something happen for you."

- Dr. Wayne Dyer

"Perhaps the most effective method of bringing the
subconscious into practical action is through the process
of making mental pictures - using the imagination. "

- Claude Bristol

"There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in
your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and
hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become
exactly as you have been thinking."

- William James, 1842-1910, Psychologist and Author

Despite these glowing endorsements and a long track record,
some people can't get past feeling that this is just a
"hokey" self-help technique. Rest assured, however, that
visualization is an effective and time-tested method for
increasing personal success that has been used by some of
the highest achievers the world.

The Soviets started to popularize visualization in sports
psychology back in the 1970's, as detailed in Charles
Garfield's landmark book, "Peak Performance. " They
dominated in many sports during that period, which
validated visualization anecdotally.

In the last 10-15 years, there has been some groundbreaking
new brain research which has validated visualization
scientifically. Here's something that was written recently
by Dr. Richard Restak, a neuroscientist and author of 12
books about the human brain:

"The process of imagining yourself going through the
motions of a complex musical or athletic performance
activates brain areas that improve your performance. Brain
scans have placed such intuitions on a firm neurological
basis. Positron emission tomography (PET) scans reveal that
the mental rehearsal of an action activates the prefontal
areas of the brain responsible for the formulation of the
appropriate motor programs. In practical terms, this means
you can benefit from the use of mental imagery."

So much for being a "cheesy" self-help technique.

Although visualization is widely used today, even people
who are familiar with it often don't realize its many
applications. Arguably the most common use of visualization
is by athletes, musicians and other performers as a form of
"mental rehearsal." Research shows that "practicing in your
mind" is almost as effective as practicing physically, and
that doing both is more effective than either one alone.

A common use of visualization in the fitness context is
"goal visualization. " In your mind's eye, you can see
yourself having already achieved your physique goal or your
ideal goal weight. You can also visualize a specific
performance goal such as completing a difficult workout or
a heavy lift like a squat or bench press.

One creative way you can use mental imagery is called
"process visualization. " Once you've set your goals, it's
easy to come up with a list of the daily habits, behaviors
and action steps necessary to reach your goal. So write
down the action steps and visualize them - the entire
process, not just the end result. See yourself food
shopping and grabbing fruits, vegetables and lean proteins,
ordering healthy foods from restaurant menus, saying no to
sodas and drinking water instead, and going to the gym
consistently and having killer workouts. Some people
visualize their entire "perfect day" as they would want it
to unfold. When you do this as vividly, emotionally and in
as much detail as you can, you will be neurologically
priming your brain to carry out those behaviors.

The least known of all mental imagery techniques is called
"physiology visualization. " An example would be picturing
the fat burning process in your body or seeing the muscle
fibers growing larger and larger. Using this technique,
could it be possible that you might be giving subconscious
instructions to your body's cells, organs and tissues?

Well, consider the work of Dr. Carl Simonton, a physician
and cancer researcher who taught his patients (as one part
of a comprehensive program), how to visualize powerful
immune cells devouring the cancer cells. I'm not suggesting
that you can cure cancer or materialize a lean and muscular
body just by visualizing, (there's a step in between
thought and manifestation - it's called action - a step
that many self help `experts' forget to mention). However,
thoughts and mental images are the precursors to action and
the fact that a mind-body connection definitely exists
makes this an exciting prospect.

Scientists have established the mind-body link in many
contexts, and not just by the existence of a placebo
effect. There's also direct evidence as in the way
emotional stress can contribute to physical disease. The
mind does influence the body! The mere fact that a branch
of science has been devoted to this area is proof that it
deserves critical investigation and is not just the domain
of infomercial self help gurus. The science is called
psychoneuroimmunolo gy.

Using "physiology visualization, " you could, even in the
middle of a workout, imagine the fat burning process taking
place, and visualize fat being released from adipose tissue
storage in your abdominal region or elsewhere. You could
see the free fatty acids entering your bloodstream, being
carried to the working muscles and being burned for energy
in the muscle cells. You could also visualize the
physiology of muscle growth.

To make your imagery as accurate and detailed as possible,
my best suggestion is to refer to an anatomy & physiology
textbook that shows pictures of fat cells, blood vessels,
myofibrils, motor units, sarcomeres, and cell organelles
like the mitochondria, so you know what the structures look
like. You could also get more details about the processes
by looking up lipolysis, hypertrophy or beta oxidation.

Even if you had no idea what the internal structure and
workings of the body were like, you could still use this
method. Your body responds to mental imagery even if it
isn't anatomically correct. We know from the field of
hypnosis that the subconscious mind responds well to
metaphor – maybe even better than literal suggestions.
Facts and logic are the domain of the conscious mind, while
emotion and metaphor can slip right past the conscious and
into the subconscious. Dr. Simonton often wrote about his
young patients who created (metaphorical) mental images of
immune system cells as "knights in shining armor", slaying
"the dragon" of cancer cells.

One of your greatest mental powers is imagination. You can
visualize anything you want and you can embellish and
exaggerate your imagery as much as you want. For example,
you could imagine the free fatty acids being burned for
energy in the "cellular powerhouse" - the mitochondria -
and you could imagine the mitochondrion as a fiery
furnace... "incinerating" the fat! I think it's a pretty
cool idea to "see" your fat cells shrinking and visualize
your body as a "fat burning furnace."

Should you not believe that there's anything to the
physiology visualization technique, that's ok, because we
know that the subconscious is deductive. Just give it a
goal, tell it what you want and it will get you there
automatically by altering your attention and behavior.
Therefore, we can be confident that physiology
visualization will be effective even if only as a
subconscious directive about your desired goal. If science
someday provides us with conclusive evidence that
visualization actually does cause cellular - physiological
changes in the body, well, that's just all the better.

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified
personal trainer, certified strength & conditioning
specialist (CSCS), certified master practitioner of NLP and
author of the best selling diet e-book, Burn The Fat, Feed
The Muscle. Tom teaches you how to lose fat without drugs
or supplements using the little-known secrets of the
world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to
get rid of stubborn fat and turbo-charge your metabolism by
visiting http://www.BurnTheFat.com , home of Burn The Fat,
Feed The Muscle and http://www.BurnTheFatInnerCircle.Com ,
the Internet's premier members-only fat loss support
community.