The Zone-Tone Technique, By: Hugo Rivera and James Villepigue

Note: The article below is an excerpt from the upcoming books (The Bodysculpting Bible for Men and The Bodysculpting Bible for Women written by Hugo Rivera and James Villepigue).

Introduction
Obviously, one of your goals is to get in great shape as quickly as possible, right? If you don't know already, you will soon discover that the mind-to-muscle connection coupled with performing proper exercise technique and form are crucial if you want to stimulate the necessary muscle fibers needed to create a dynamite physique. While one may think this knowledge to be obvious and common sense, strangely enough, most people neglect the mental aspect behind exercise execution. It is not unusual to go to a gym and see people that are just "going through the motions"; in other words, moving a weight from point A to point B with little stimulation being directed towards the working muscles.

In this section you will soon learn yet another very powerful technique that will immediately provide astonishing performance and enhanced results to your physique by teaching you how to enhance your mind-to-muscle connection!

Concept
We have decided to name this very unique concept the "Zone-Tone" technique. It is the art of mentally zoning in and pre-isolating specific muscles just before an exercise is to be executed while at the same time maintaining that zone throughout the execution of the movement. This wonderful technique is very easy to grasp and will deliver enormous benefits to your fitness program. Combining proper form and technique (something that you will learn in the upcoming sections) with the Zone-Tone method will help you to reach all of your fitness goals much faster than with conventional practices; as the level of isolation and stimulation that you will get every time that you perform an exercise using this method will increase ten-fold.

There are several reasons why people fail to create a successful mind-to-muscle connection:

• Lack of human body anatomy knowledge combined with lack of information available on how to successfully create a mind-to-muscle connection.

• Mis-information on the part of our teachers or books regarding exercise execution. In other words, people getting the wrong kinds of advice.

• Humans have a difficult time with change since they get accustomed to doing the same old thing and feel more comfortable and less at risk by doing so. As a result, they refuse to change the way in which they conduct their exercises.

• Lifting gargantuan weights without any concern for proper exercise form in order to satisfy our ego.

Of all of these possibilities, perhaps the biggest reason is the lack of information available on how to successfully create a mind-to-muscle connection coupled with a lack of basic anatomy. If I asked you where your biceps were, would you be able to point to their exact location on your body? Are you aware that there are actually two biceps muscles, hence the prefix "bi"? Now, the next question is, if I asked you to flex your biceps muscle, could you do it effectively? How about your hamstring muscles located behind your thigh. Could you make that muscle contract really hard? Believe me, we're getting somewhere here guy's and gals's! Let's talk triceps; those three relatively small muscles located on the back of the upper arms. If I asked you to squeeze those muscles hard so that they tensed up intensely, could you do so immediately? The answers to these simple questions will soon lead to perhaps the most profound, beneficial and eye opening mental exercise technique the fitness industry has ever experienced. Please do not feel bad if you do not know where these muscles are located. Our job is to teach you where they are and how to use them.

Now, when you're getting ready to do an exercise, do you ever stop to think about exactly what muscles you are about to train? Some of you will say yes and mean it. Some of you will say yes and not tell the whole truth. Most of you will say NO! This is the amazing reality we are dealing with. I must admit to you though, that we truly love this fact too. We love it, of course, because we are the ones who will teach the world how to correctly and effectively transform their physiques 10 times more quickly than they previously could have. We love it even more because the fact that you may have been neglecting the mind-to-muscle connection while performing an exercise means that you all have a tremendous window of opportunity for major improvements to be made in your physique.

The key to improving the mind-to-muscle connection is to become attune with our bodies before and throughout the movement. This means knowing what muscles you are targeting before you start the exercise and moving the muscle from its full extended position to its full contracted position while feeling the muscles (and only the intended muscles) contract and extend throughout the movement. Carelessly going through the motions of exercise is a complete waste of time and a great way to get no where quickly.

So How Do We Use the Zone-Tone?
While at the beginning the Zone-Tone concept might seem difficult to learn, it is not! You might think that you won't be able to do it effectively but we know you can! We have taught it successfully to many others and now we will do the same for you!

There are only two simple steps to the Zone-Tone method:

1.       Focus and zone in on the individual muscle/s you intend to train before you begin the exercise: Before each and every set of an exercise, focus and zone in on the individual muscle/s you intend to train (for this, knowledge of where each muscle is located is crucial). Tense and flex the muscle to be trained as hard as comfortably possible before you even start to execute the exercise. This way you will be sending a message to that muscle, preparing it, by completely isolating it even before the exercise begins. By doing so you have successfully created a mind-to-muscle connection.

2.       Maintain your mind-to-muscle connection during the execution of the exercise: Throughout the execution of the exercise, feel the muscle extend and contract as you move the way from point A to point B. What we really want you to do while you are performing the exercise is to flex the muscle as hard as you can in the same way that you did on step 1 but with the exception that now you have a weight in your hand. This is crucial as it is of no benefit to activate the muscles before the exercise begins if the mind-to-muscle connection is lost as the movement starts. Most people, and I mean most people, waste their time by exercising without thinking about what they're doing. They exercise on a physical plane rather than on both the mental and physical planes. This is fine if you are content with average results, but who really wants to be average? On the other hand, if you want to compound your efforts exponentially and undeniably create the body you've always dreamed about having, then you must effectively develop the mind-to-muscle connection that we have been describing to you here.

Conclusion
When you effectively call out to that muscle and prepare it for the following set you create a mind-to-muscle connection. By keeping this connection up throughout the execution of the exercise that one set will produce the results of 5 sets! Did you read that! Do you realize what this can mean for you?! If you implement these principles into your training regimen, you can create unbelievably (large) toned and incredibly defined muscles in half the time! Imagine then the type of results that you will get by combining the Zone-Tone method with the 14-Day Body Sculpting Program and the exercise execution techniques that are later presented in this book. We guarantee that by combining all of these concepts you will achieve the most astounding and unbelievable physical transformation in the minimum amount of time.