I have noticed a trend developing over the years. It’s a misconception of what exercise is/should be. We have all seen the commercials for products like “Beastly Biceps”, “Absurdly Sexy Abs”, and “From Flab to Fab in Like 8 Minuets”.
Note: None of these are real product names, at least not yet.
For the most part these kinds of products throw around the phrase “Muscle Confusion”, the idea that confusing the hell out of your muscle is somehow going to make them stronger and better looking. Well, its not.
You don’t reach your goal by just throwing a bunch of crap at your body and hoping by some miracle your shit soup, that you have created, ends up getting you the results you want.
What I am getting at is you don’t need millions of new exercises or high intensity routines to get results. In fact all this variation could be preventing you from getting the results you want.
Getting Cutie with Exercise
Let’s first learn what a cutie exercise looks like.
It looks hard and challenging, unique and different to the untrained eye. To a trained coach it looks risky, ridiculous, and just plain stupid.
A good rule of thumb when spotting these exercises or routines is to see if they have any exercises that involves any kind of weighted exercise on a Stability Ball or BOSU Ball. If so, there is a really good chance something stupid is about to happen, so get your cell phone ready.
There is a reason that BOSU Squats are not the norm and other exercises like benching, deadlifting, squatting, and rows are still around after hundreds of years of use. There is nothing cutie or sexy about these exercise, well I do find a nice looking deadlift extremely sexy, but they all get the job done and produce results day in and day out.
These cutie cool looking exercises don’t produce results for one simple fact that these exercises cannot be loaded safely, with enough weight to produce a great enough stimuli for the body to feel it should adapt.
Yo-yoing Your Goals
You have heard of yo-yo dieting. If I were to ask, “Is it good?”, you would say “No”. Why? Because you don’t get results by flip flopping your diet every other week. The same thing is true when training.
You have to work on one goal at a time. For years I would flip flop almost monthly between strength and cutting. These two goals are on the opposite side of the spectrum when it comes to goals. I am a coach, I know that. You know what I ended up with? Something in the middle. I am a little stronger and a little leaner, but if I stuck to one goal at a time I would be a whole lot stronger and leaner.
Pick a goal and own it, give the body a chance to change.
Too Much Variation; Not Enough Consistency
Another trap people fall into is changing up their program every few weeks. This is due to either boredom or lack of knowledge. New exercises are fun, they’re exciting, and they keep you coming back to the gym for more.
The one thing they lack is long term results. To much exercise variety leads to general fitness and health, or simply put mediocrity. If you keep changing the exercises every week then you will never know which ones work best for you. Everything works for a little while but some things work better then others.
By consistently having a few exercises that are staples in your programs you can easily see if what you are doing is actually getting results. Allowing you to be able to weed out which exercises doesn’t work for you.
The meat and potatoe lifts are what satisfy you and feeds you. Leave the fluffy doughy exercises for the kids.
Too Much Volume, Turn It Down
This has to be the biggest mistake in exercise; way too much volume not enough rest.
What is volume? Simply put, sets x reps 5×3=15, 4×10=40 and 1+1=2.
You need volume to create enough stimuli for the body to adapt and eventually change. This is pretty much how results work. The body is presented with a stress, it does not like that, the challenge was hard, so the body adapts.
More volume must equal more result. Yes and no. You have to think of work as a stress. Too little stress equals no results/change. Too much equals no results/change and possibly loss of gains. If stressed just enough the body will change and become stronger. It’s “The Goldilocks Conundrum”.
If you are doing high volume workouts 3 to 5 days a week you are over stressing the body. Add in poor diet and lack of sleep you are just asking for overtraining.
If you are not getting results and are training with the dial cranked to 11. Then turn it down a notch or 5. Give your body a chance to adapt.
This is where it is good to have planed deload weeks and planed high volume days as well as lower volume days to allow your body to recover.
Closing
There is nothing wrong with variation but to much or to frequent variation can lead to you not getting results. Stick to what works and every once and a while sprinkle in something a little different to spice it up.
Best
Josh Williams
