WWW.ONFITNESSMAG.COM | VOL 22 NO 5 | 2022 50 SMART TRAINING DeShawn D.Williams EYES-CLOSED TRAINING ( VISUAL IMAGERY SPATIAL REFERENCING ELIMINATION TRAINING ) By closing your eyes, you're forcing all your other senses to open up and take over. Right away you'll start noticing any muscle imbalances. By closing your eyes you focus on the feel of muscle contraction, thus tapping into your mind-muscle connection, a real-life neuromuscular phenomenon that many veteran lifters have tapped into. Without your visual fields in play, you've cut down on the amount of total sensory input feeding into your system. This gives you better mental acuity and focus. When it comes to mastering one's movement, optimizing motor control and body mechanics is the name of the game. What this often comes down to is responding to subtle and virtually imperceptible inputs deep within the nervous system that are not visible to the naked eye and can only be tuned into at the neuromuscular level by the individual. It is also why, for reasons that will be discussed in later sections, individuals should rarely use the mirror when training. The better the athlete can become at tuning into this subtle yet critical feedback the more they will be able to master their mechanics. One way to enhance an individual's ability to tune into their proprioceptive feedback and make the necessary adjustments is through the use of eyes-closed protocols. Please support our journalism, subscribe now! Onfitnessmag.com/subscribe.http://WWW.ONFITNESSMAG.COM http://www.Onfitnessmag.com/subscribe