brett | Fri January 09, 2009 at 3:30 am
hi
I am just wondering what studys have been undertaken to prove that 6 weeks is not long enough in order to change your exersies.???
Why You Should Not Change Exercises Too Often?
BEGINNER | January 04 2009
If you think you need to change exercises to keep strength and muscle gains coming, you should keep reading.
Why people change exercises too often?
To confuse/shock the muscle: This is the most popular reason for changing exercises. You cannot confuse or shock a muscle, period. It is physiologically impossible.
Muscles are passive tissues that contract when told to do so. It doesn’t have a brain of its own to get confused. It is as stupid as saying if you pull an elastic band in a different angle you confuse and shock the band.
Muscle Magazines said so: Most of the changing exercises concept come from muscle magazines (for example the Weider muscle Confusion Principle).
- Most models are genetically gifted and use “real” supplements. Unlike naturals, they can do whatever they want and still grow.
- They need to put out a magazine every month. New exercise pictures are a great way to fill magazine pages every month.
Why you should NOT change exercises too often?
Learning Curve: Every exercise has a learning curve called Neural Changes or Adaptations (nervous system adaptations). It is just like learning to ride a bike. You get better at whatever you do with practice.
This learning period take a few weeks or a few months depending on the exercise & the skill level.
Muscle Increase: The muscle increase is minimal during the time when body learns to do a new exercise. Muscle increases largely come after the neural changes plateau as shown in the figure.
Figure: The neural changes plateau after 8-20 weeks. And then the muscle growth becomes more prominent.(Reference 1)
So if you keep on changing exercises every 4 or 6 weeks, the body never gets a chance to increase the muscle involved in that particular exercise. By the time your learning curve (or neural adaptations) plateaus, you unfortunately jumped onto a different exercise.
Strength Increase: The strength increase you experience in the learning period is mainly improvement in skill or neural adaptations than due to muscle growth. This disappear once you stop doing that particular exercise.
Recommendations
- Keep 2-3 basic exercises for each body part, like incline bench press, dumbbell press for chest and rotate them. This way you don’t have to stick with one exercise.
- You can change single joint exercises like dumbbell curls, chest flyes and so on. The neural adaptations are minimal for single joint exercises.
- If you hit a plateau in an exercise, it is time to re-analyze your program and diet and not to change the exercise to “shock” your muscles..
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Anoop | Fri January 09, 2009 at 4:43 am
It is pretty much established that neural adaptations dominate strength increases in the early phase.
These are mainly done by studies with surface electrodes and deep needle electrodes to measure neural drive and motor unit recruitment. These changes have been shown up till 20 weeks. These studies show significant increase in strength but little changes in muscle size during this period.
If you ask a power lifter and they will tell it’s all about technique, technique, and technique.
Hope it helps
Shannon | Wed January 28, 2009 at 1:03 am
Hi Anoop
I am confused. So if I change exercises, will I not increase muscle?? I was told you need to mix it up because your muscles adapt. I get more confused every time I read your articles 
Anoop | Thu January 29, 2009 at 2:52 am
Hi Shannon
I am not saying you will not increase muscle at all. There will be increase in muscle but this will be less than if you stayed with an exercise for longer. The graph is a continuum and it depends on the skill level level and genetics of the person. I just posted one study because that’s the groundbreaking study by DG Sale which introduced this concept in 80’s. This is the study which is quoted in every literature which explans neural adaptations and strength training. DG Sale is one of the pioneers in the field of neural adaptations.
And this is not anything groundbreaking or “my” theory. This has been known for quite a few years. If it was something really groundbreaking, it would have been an Advanced article and not a Beginner level article. The thing is that most of the right stuff never really reaches 98% of the people. What people hear or read is often stuff from muscle magazines and buffed up people who read muscle magazines. So I understand when you say you get confused reading my articles.
I got banned from a forum because they thought this is something too controversial. And obviously since some of them couldn’t admit they are wrong, they felt t like my tone and attitude was inappropriate for the forum. The moderator and some of the senior members had a lot to say but nothing relevant to the discussion. It is really funny to see how people talk about how research is important blah bah and in the very next line talk about “how they got excellent results this way and that way”. Everyone get results. If you eat, sleep, and lift, you will get results. The question is what is optimal or what really works than what works.
There are only a couple of forums in which I feel there are people who really understand research, take time to read research , and can make some intelligent debate . Or maybe I should say these are the people who genuinely have a desire to learn and don’t mind being wrong at times. It is no surprise why this profession have never achieved the credibility and acceptance that it deserves.
Hope I will not get banned from here (:-.
Mumford | Thu February 12, 2009 at 5:48 am
This article has been enlightening. For my workouts, i usually keep the same routine except that i switch barbell exercises and dumbbell exercises every week (they are still the same exercises). I have been doing this for a while and received progress, as i am proficient in both db and bb type exercises now. However I am afraid this alternating is not optimal for increasing strength and muscle mass. Should i continue this training?
Anoop | Thu February 12, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Hi
As long as you stick long enough with whatever you are doing, you will be fine. The problem only arises when people don’t stick with things long enough
So if your weight in dumbells or barbell exercise is stuck, you know something is wrong. But if you keep changing stuff every now and then, you will never have a clue whether you are doing something wrong, or even right.
Hope it helps
Kevin from Home Gym Reviews | Thu March 12, 2009 at 3:42 am
Always keep these two basic exercise principles in mind:
A workout must exceed some threshold of intensity in order to stimulate growth and begin building muscle mass. Overload the muscles in your routines to get them pumped up. To put it bluntly: if you do a sissy workout then you should expect to see only sissy results!
The second principle involves working with progressive resistance. As your body will often reach a plateau and stop improving, you should progressively increase the amount of resistance (i.e., lift heavier weights), as well as perform more reps. You will also want to change your exercise routine every few weeks. This will deny your body some of the muscle memory it is accustomed to, and will keep the muscles guessing with new lifts, presses, and rows.
Anoop | Thu March 19, 2009 at 1:28 am
Hi Kevin,
Could you be more specific please.
What you mean by muscle memory and what has it got to do with changing exercise routine? And how do you keep your muscles “guessing”?
Becky | Thu December 24, 2009 at 1:56 am
I love this article!
I have been doing the same routine consistently for several months and am very pleased with my results.
Great site!
Thanks again…
Aaron | Mon January 18, 2010 at 12:51 am
Hi Anoop,
The one thing that makes no sense to me when someone argues the reasoning for “muscle confusion” is to prevent the muscles from adapting to the exercise. Why don’t they realize that getting your muscles to adapt (which to me means grow bigger and stronger to handle the work load) is a great thing? Is that not the entire point of training? Stimulate the muscles, which in turn adapt- grow, and then progress by increasing the variables(reps, resistance, TUL, etc.)
If someone is constantly changing their program how will they ever know which program is producing results? You’ve got to give it time, and when you plateau make the changes to the variables before scrapping the entire routine.
Anoop | Mon January 18, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Hi Aaron,
Yes and that’s my point too.
When you change exercises what happens is that you are using weights much lighter than what you could have if you had stuck to the exercise longer.Simply put, your muscles are getting much less loading.
And as I said you can pick a few exercises and rotate so that you don’t have to do the same exercise again and again.
stewy | Wed February 17, 2010 at 10:09 am
Hey, I know this is an old thread, but I was wondering if you could give me a workout plan of the idea you are describing. I know you started in the recommended section but i was wondering if you would put it into something I can put into practice? I’d really appreciate it. great theory!(since thats what you have to say nowadays ha) great thread!
Anoop | Wed February 17, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Hi Stewy,
Pick one exercise each for back, chest and legs. Keep doing that exercise for ever. Change the rest of them.
or If you need change, pick 2 or 3 exercises each for back, chest and legs and rotate them. Do the first set the first week, the second set the second week and so on.
Ollie | Mon March 15, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Hi
I’m curious as to if your rotating two seperate routines continuously is beneficial. I have a basic weight training routine containing squats, deadlift pull ups, arnold press and chest press/push ups.
Additionally I have a muay thai routine with more emphasis on power, stamina and martial arts. This is circuit based and includes complex body weight compound movements such as power squat thrusts, rollover chinups, power split squat twists and alternating scissor crunches.
I generally work out every other day and change between the routines each time so it’s still very consistant. I have seen results and I feel much stronger but was interested on you opinion on what I’m doing and whether this counts as constant change.
Anoop | Tue March 16, 2010 at 1:46 am
I think that’s fine. You comment about getting stronger means that you have been using those exact exercises so that’s good.
When people say, I don’t know if I am getting stronger because I change exercise a lot, then it becomes a problem.
