Muscle Confusion and Switching Things Up Daily
I’ve been working out seriously for about 5 years now. For the first 2.5-3 years I had incredible results but then sadly what worked for me the first 2.5-3 years stopped working. This really discouraged me. I thought I’d never get to where I wanted to be unless I made serious sacrifices to my social life and diet. After a brief time I ran into an old friend (who was in amazing shape) and I explained my problem to him. He told me what I was doing was totally wrong. What I discovered that day was totally incredible. I learned in order to grow I must frequently change my routine. He said the optimal range is to change the style and pattern every 3-4 weeks.
Have you ever heard someone say in the gym “I need to switch things up I’m starting to plateau”. I was that person! I was doing something for so long without noticing that my body was adapting. The form of training I was doing became too typical and too routine for my body. The result was that repetitive, never changing routine did not affect it one bit.
So after that special day of gaining insight, I have been constantly switching my workout routine every 3-4 weeks. 3-4 weeks is the sweet spot where you can make considerable solid gains until the body starts to adapt to the style and movement in your pattern of training. A critical Point to remember is that we are training the movement of the body part not the muscle itself. This principle applies to both individuals seeking weight loss and those searching for muscle gain.
So you’ve probably heard the term “muscle confusion”. And you may ask what is muscle confusion? I can tell you this. The body is unique. It has evolved for thousands of years around the principle of: “Use less energy, get the same results”. This ability allows one to run faster or longer for the same energetic defense. It involved your instincts in the wild and adaptation over time. While it was very useful in that long ago wild environment, it’s quite annoying at the gym. So when I work out small tears actually form in my muscles resulting in those same muscles growing bigger over time as a result of adaptation. If I were to put myself through the same workout over and over again then I’d have diminishing results over time. This is the muscle confusion principle! Variation, variation, variation!
Below I have included some useful forms of muscle confusion
COMPOUND LIFTS
Compound lifts are multiple muscles and joints being engaged pre exercises. Multi joint movements are the most effective and quickest way to increasing size and strength. Examples include.
∙ Bench press
∙ Deadlifts
∙ Squats
∙ Overhead presses
∙ Lunges
∙ Pull-Ups
∙ Dips
SUPERSETS
A superset is a set of two different exercises back to back without rest in between. By forcing an overload of reps you will be recruiting both type I and type II muscle fibers. Type I muscle fibers are also known as “slow twitch oxidative” fibers. Type I fibers are used in lower-intensity exercises such as light resistance work aimed toward muscular endurance. They’re characterized by low force/power/speed production. Type II muscle fibers are consider the “fast twitch oxidative” fibers. Type II fibers are characterized by high force/power/speed production and low endurance.
E.g. Bench press 10 reps
–Superset–
Push-up 10 reps
DROP SETS
A Dropset is an important technique when you perform an exercise and then drop (reduce) the weight and continue for more reps until you reach failure. The reason why drop sets work is that in any given set you are only recruiting a certain amount of muscle fibers. But by forcing an overload of reps or stripping the weight down and going lighter you recruit different muscle fibers, which help the muscles achieve growth that couldn’t be achieved by sticking with the same weight. Therefore breaking through those annoying plateaus!
E.g. – Dumbbell Curl
Set 1: – chose a weight you’d fail at 15 reps.
Set 2: – reduce weight by 5lbs. 15 reps
Set 3: – reduce weight by 5lbs. 15 reps
So give these methods a try for results! I believe if you incorporate some of these methods into your training routine you will experience solid results and break through a plateau.