Exercise Biology - The Science of Exercise, Nutrition & building muscle

Main Menu

Why You Should Not Change Exercises Too Often?

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.

Neural adaptations vs muscular adaptations

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..

Reference 1

If you like it, please share it:

Related Articles

Jonathan | Wed February 02, 2011  

Hi Anoop

I was just wondering how long I should wait to switch up a workout. I mean, in the graph the muscles don’t grow to their fullest until after 20 weeks according to the picture. Therefore, should I wait over 20 weeks to do a fill redesign of my workout? I am just starting to workout. And one other question. What are your views on protein supplements? Do you find them useful?

Anoop | Thu February 03, 2011  

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for the comment and welcome to Exercise Biology.

The whole point is make sure that you are progressing in your workouts. The rest is just details. So I would say keep it no less than 8 weeks or thereabouts.And atleast have one exercise that you don’t change like squats, bench, rows or chins and such.

And please register in the forum. I and other senior members will be more than happy to help you.

Protein powder is useful around your workouts. I wouldn’t recommend it during non-workout times. You can do it, but not a healthy way to look good.

Bryce | Thu February 17, 2011  

Hey, great article. I am currently on rippetoe’s SS. It’s heavy compound lifts three times a week. Someone suggested I should do 2 weeks of rippetoe, increasing weight and such, and then one week of an isolation superset program. So it would be 2 rippetoe 1 iso 2 rippetoe etc… I was wondering if this would screw with my neural adaptation to rippetoe. I’ve been on it close to six weeks and my strength gains are slowing down. Hopefully this means neural adaptation is over and muscle will start taking over.

Thanks in advance!

Anoop | Fri February 18, 2011  

Hi Bryce,

Thanks for the comment!

There will be always neural adaptations. The extent of adaptations will be much higher in the beginning.Can’t pin point when it ends and such. 

If you are looking for a muscle building routine, you can do Rippetoe’s routine with a higher rep like 8 or 10 and more sets. And maybe add one or two isolations in the same day. Makes sense?

If you are adding a whole isolation week, you are basically butchering the program. It is good that you came to me and didn’t ask Rippetoe this question (:-

Mike | Fri August 12, 2011  

Anoop

Quick question: I work out 4-5 times a week and often do change a exercises or two or I do it in different orders and different repetitions every week. Is this bad? I am having some trouble putting on muscle. I haven’t been moving up in weight progressively every week.

What do you recommend?

Anoop | Sat August 13, 2011  

Hi Mike,

I don’t think it is bad.

My point is have a few exercises where you can gauge your exercises. Most people have bench press, squats and deadlift as their core exercise. So pick a few core exercises. You can change the rest of them. Makes sense?

Please register in the forum if you need more help.

shams | Sat September 24, 2011  

Will you please help me with this connundrum.  If i am doing seated rows on a pulley for eight weeks. Can i then switch it for inlcine bench rows on a pully with exactly the same weight as i was doing on seated rows before switching? In both the exercises, same muscles will be trained but from different angles.  And what about progressive overloading.  Once a trainer reaches a stage in a given exercise where he simply cannot overload the weight any more, is it not appropriate for him to move to another exercise for the same muscle.

Scott | Thu September 29, 2011  

My program which I do 3 times a week

Shoulder press 4x15
Lat raise 3x6-8
Chest press 1x15, 1x12 ,1x10 and 1x8
Flys 3x6-8
Lat pull down 1x15, 1x12 ,1x10 and 1x8
Seated row 3x6-8
Leg press 3-15

All to maximum .. Think this ideal if so should I keep doing it to see benefits or change the program ?? As I hit a stage where I haven’t increased on weight ?? Thanks

Anoop | Mon October 03, 2011  

Hi Scott,

Thanks for the comment.

If you are doing it 3 times/ week, you better have a way to manage the fatigue. Or you will be hit pretty hard by the 3rd or 4th week.

Maybe divide into a push-pull scheme so you only hit a muscle group at the most twice a week.  These kind of 3times a week full body workout are hard to manage fatigue if you are not careful.

Join the forum if you think you need more help

Jamie | Mon October 03, 2011  

Hi Annop

I’ve been doing all school workouts for afew year aka full body training mainly based around compound workouts with afew isolation thrown in I have stalled on my progressive overload cant add any reps or weight to my workouts diet and rest is fine infact im just back from a week off my routine and still no further lol thanks in advance

Anoop | Sat October 08, 2011  

Hi Jamie,

How your diet like? Do you get 8 hours of sleep?

And why not try an upper-lower - upper,Lower routine?

Register int he forum if you need more help , Jamie.

Mike | Sun January 29, 2012  

Hey,im confused to by all this stuff hahaha i found a good workout routine i want to use involving dumbbells since i have room for them only,here is the link,www.building-muscle101.com/dumbbell-workout-routine.html The question is,should i just follow this program and not do muscle confusion and just add weight as needed?i don’t like worrying about confusion,i lifted weights before and for quite some time now when i was younger and never even herd of confusion,now im hearing all this mumbo jumbo about confusion all over the net and im lost bad,i don’t want to do confusion i just want a good work out program involving dumbbells that i can use without all the mess,after i get a room built for working out i will get barbells and do some more heavier lifting any help you could give me?i would be very grateful,

sun | Mon April 23, 2012  

Hi Anoop! there are a few questions that I have. I have an exercise routine that I do NOT want to change, ever. Is this possible to do the same exercise for the rest of my life if I wanted to? How do you deal with maintanence? Also you say to keep 2 or 3 exercises for a muscle and rotate them, isn’t that applying muscle confusion? I’ve heard that is how you do muscle confusion by not doing the same exercise and rotating them. I know what you mean about improving skill and strength in exercising, now that I have learned how to properly work a muscle I really don’t want to change to a new exercise just to relearn it. Once I’m happy with my results, how do I maintain it can I just keep the same exercise without adding more resistance and change ever? Thank you

Anoop | Fri April 27, 2012  

Hi Sun,

You can do the same exercise forever. Look at olympic lifters and power lifters.

I am not sure if I understand your question. the three exercises are if people get bored or if you want to hit a different muscle in the same group for example, upper chest.

Makes sense?

What do you think?

Smileys

NAME

EMAIL *email will never be displayed

URL (optional)

Please enter the word you see in the image below:

what is the color of sky

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

>