Is There a Shortcut to Building Muscle?

The human mind, powerful enough to create space shuttles, discover penicillin, and distract you in supposedly important meetings, may also be able to singlehandedly make your body stronger. Yes, there's some evidence that you can increase your strength just by thinking about your muscles getting stronger.

In a small study at one of our home institutions (yes! the Cleveland Clinic), people who imagined flexing their elbows for 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week had about a 13% gain in flexion strength after 12 weeks of doing it. People who didn't do these mental exercises didn't see any strength gains. It wasn't an anomaly: Another study showed that people gained ankle-bending power just by thinking through exercises to strengthen it. But here's the thing: People who actually did the exercises improved even more (a 17% increase for the thinkers versus a 25% increase for the doers).

So can you just sit around and think about exercise instead of doing it? Sort of. Our question is why you'd want to sit around and think hard about one muscle for 15 minutes when you can do an entire, whole-body strength routine in just 20 minutes a day! We suggest a hybrid: Do an actual move-your-body strength routine and think about it while you do it. Whether being mindful about your workout will boost your muscle power isn't yet known, but engaging your mind in what you're doing can help reduce stress. And we're pretty sure you have some of that you'd like to ditch.