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When weight training you are isolating a certain muscle or muscles. Due to the direction that the exercise or the machine is pushing you, you should be targeting certain areas and therefore feeling a certain burn deep in the muscle tissue, depending of course, on the intensity of the resistance.

However, new exercisers often can't feel this deep muscle burn and therefore assume they are not targeting the proper muscle groups.

This is because of three main reasons:

1. the weight is too heavy or technique is not good enough
2. the new exerciser has never done this type of work before and therefore has a low level of body muscle on the body
3. your Mind isn't On the Muscle, hence the saying: “Ask your ‘MOM' for some help with the weights”.

When your mind is thinking of the area attempting to work, you are sending signals to the exact muscle groups from the brain and getting them to respond, so in short, your mind is connected to the muscle.

For example, if you were to try and lift a dumb-bell or weight, from an extended straight arm position to a flexed position, you would be contracting your bicep muscle.Try and do this and think of the weather or something other than the exercise, and you will feel very little burn or building feeling in this muscle.

Then do the opposite and lift the weight thinking about the bicep, concentrating all resistance in the bicep imagining that with ever lift the muscle is growing bigger, stronger and getting more toned. You will be surprised with how much more you can isolate the targeted muscle groups.

The other way to get a maximum sensation out of working a targeted muscle group and to help build greater strength is to use a method called PEAK CONTRACTION.

This is applying the same focus explained above but at the very end of the exercise when the muscle is under maximum tension, ie attempting to squeeze the targeted muscle groups together as tight as possible,

For example, when lifting that bicep curl earlier, once you reach the very top when the arm is flexed, squeeze the bicep really tightly together feeling the burn. The result should be a greater gain of strength in that muscle group.

So when weight lifting, make sure you have the right technique, the right exercise, the right weight and then get your ‘MOM' to help. That is, thinking constantly about where you are trying to work and squeezing that muscle tightly at the very top of the movement.