Triple M - the Mysterious Mind Muscle connection

[Xv1d]

Time for some honesty.

I was moving those weights like a god damn boss, increasing in weight load every week like a proper beast at work. However, looking at other weightlifters I realized slowly but surely my execution of the different exercises sure looked a lot more "dynamic", compared to the others, to say the least.

Shoulders moving during EZ bicep curls, even the hips, elbows flaring out. Heavy rows included some serious action from the quads and glutes. Bouncing my deadlift, moving the leg extension with no actual contraction at the top and the infamous shrugging during side lateral raises.

Plateu's and stagnation driving me to looking at youtube videos with buff dudes lifting tiny weights speaking of the... Mysterious Mind Muscle connection.

Why oh Why hath my gains abandoned me... could the Mind Muscle connection be the answer?

Seriously though, this bitch was a hard nut to crack for me. I swallowed my pride and started lifting small weights very strictly a few years back, only cheating the last rep to exhaust my last energy reserve. I'm sure I'm not the only one whos walked down that road, and It sure can be hard to make that solid mind muscle connnection, It's still a work in progress for me, perhaps some experienced lifters in here can lend a hand.

I'm struggling with these three points, so tell me:
Whats your best tip for connecting with your delts during side lateral raises?
Whats your best recommendations on developing a lagging chest, mostly due to lacking mind muscle connection?
And those obliques, damn near impossible to hitt them spot on! Help me out!

Feel free to share your own success story with breaking some plateu's!
I made some incredible progress in my rows once I dropped my weights by 50% and really focused on squeezing those shoulder blades together.

[Xv1d]

Hitting the mid section of the pecs. Are dumbbell flies the remedy ?

[Proximal]

For my mind-muscle connection, I slow down my reps and lighten the load until I can feel the movement better.

For chest, I personally favor the various Hammer machines because they work so many angles, plus I play with the seat height, which further varies the angles.

For obliques, I am a fan of the Free-Motion cable machines. I personally love a half-kneel trunk rotation from high to low.

[hellomycognomen]

Weights and numbers are ego driven. Your muscles don't care about either. If an exercise is done with proper form even a "low" weight can feel like the heaviest. Work the muscle not the weight.

For delts my favorite by far is doing them on the cable machine. You change the resistance curve and will really help you with activating the mind-muscle feel.

For chest it could be that you are not doing enough, or maybe you are doing too much. Muscles are built outside the gym, without proper rest and recovery gains will come slow.

Obliques as with abs in general, diet is king. I like to do elevated sit ups with twist at the top position and really focus on the squeeze, quality over quantity.

-Cheers

[krugerr]

I have found the "tap" technique invaluable when targetting specific muscles. And still use it now. If I'm doing shrugs for example, my brother might sometimes stand behind me. Lightly pressing on, or tapping the traps. This helps to focus and target the specific muscle. That's an example, we use it on lats, pecs, rear delts.. Typically exercises I know I'm prone to cheating on by recruiting other muscles. Or as I said, just once in a while to reinforce the connection.
The technique actually came when I first started posing. I had particular trouble witha proper lay spread. So my coach would stand behind me just constantly tapping them as I posed them. It really helped 'locate' and focus on it. I just took this across tiny training.

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