Simplicity Is King, and Muscle Confusion Is Garbage
Takeaway Points:
In general, you’ll get better results from following a simpler routine more consistently, rather than constantly varying and changing your routine.
Fad workout routines based around “muscle confusion” can work, but will generally provide you inferior results to simpler and more consistent routines.
Serious lifting athletes rely on ideal the routines and strategies which have been developed over the years, and focus on practicing a small number of movements repeatedly, rather than constantly varying movements.
Author’s note: This is an updated version of an article originally written on 12/31/12. The text has been updated for clarity and improved author knowledge since then, and brought up to our current article design standards.
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
A lot of people don't believe it, but it's possible to get fit while doing the simplest of routines. You could do pushups, pullups, bodyweight squats, planks, flexibility work, and a bit of cardio FOREVER, and still look and be more fit than half the guys out there. Unfortunately, there's this hard-to-dispel myth going around about how you have to switch up exercises and vary your workouts so that your body doesn't “get used to” your routine and stop getting benefits out of it.
It’s not true.
The problem is that the fitness industry has grown prodigiously recently, and with that there's just as much misdirection and confusion out there as there's ever been. Trainers are a dime a dozen, and every one of them is trying to make a name for themselves and launch a career. They're all trying to become the next Tony Horton and launch the next big exercise craze so that they can be the one that gets rich off of it. Unfortunately, this just means that there's plenty of superfluous material out there for new exercisers.
You can open up any fitness magazine and chances are you'll find two or three articles about hot new exercises that you should be trying that are going to be so much more effective than the ones that you're already using. Better, since the ones you've been using so far haven't been switched up in a while, these will allow you to try out something new and keep your body moving on to new exercises! Here's the thing: those exercises aren't necessarily any more effective than your old ones, and believing that they are only deepens your indebtedness to those people who are trying to sell new ways of exercising to you.
It's a very attractive theory, in principle. People want to believe it. If you try out a new exercise that you've never done before, you're going to find that you're much more sore the next day than if you had simply used an older exercise, even if they target the same muscles. But the problem is that people falsely equate pain with gain, and in reality that pain means something else entirely: your body just isn’t used to the activity.
For those with a good grounding in exercise science, this is not surprising. There is a well-known effect called the repeated bouts effect, which states that as you practice an exercise, you get progressively less soreness as you become accustomed to the exercise. After that, you can continue to get sore, but it will typically only occur in one of the following situations:
You significantly increase intensity of your workouts
You take some time off, and thus the repeated bouts effect starts to fall off and your muscles become resensitized
You train the same muscles in a very different way than they were previously used to
None of these, on their own, mean that you’re going to get better results - they’re just ways to provoke more soreness. Excessive effort doesn’t necessarily lead to extra gains, time off CAN lead to later gains, but in the short term means that you aren’t training, and training the same muscles in a different way absolutely does not provide extra gains.
That soreness you feel when you try out a new exercise isn't because you worked out harder; all it means is that your body hasn't yet adapted to the exercise, and so it's using those muscles inefficiently. You can do all sorts of fancy squat variations on bosu balls, but unless you're adding any weight to the equation (and you aren't, because you're spending all your effort balancing on a ball!) you aren't getting any stronger.
When you work out with a specific motion, your brain becomes more adept at recruiting muscles in completing that specific motion; when you start focusing on another motion, that adaptation may have some similarities, but you still need to get over the initial phase of getting used to that movement.
In order to really build strength and muscle then, it's best to stick with only a handful of exercises which form the core of your workout, and in which you can continually develop and get strong. Otherwise you're just twiddling your thumbs and then often tossing out some of your gains whenever you switch on to the next exercise and spend more time getting accustomed to the exercise.
For example, there are plenty of different ways to work out the biceps, but they all boil down to curling motions. You can do curls with barbells, dumbbells, or cables, but they all end up training the same muscle. Each will train that muscle slightly differently, yes, but most people don't really know or care, and for the most part you really don't need stronger biceps for anything other than bragging.
I once saw a guy doing barbell curls with a resistance band hooked onto each end and then passing under his feet. When I asked him why he was training this, he honestly didn’t know. Why get more complicated when you don't have to? He could have added normal weight plates and gotten the same thing out of the exercise, without having to go through the extra effort of adding a resistance band to the equation.
Here's another reason the “you need to switch up your exercises so your body doesn't get used to them” theory is attractive: it's closely related to another, more correct theory: progressive resistance.
It's true, you can't just exercise with the exact same sets and reps over and over and expect to make any real gains. But the solution isn't to switch up your exercises, it's to switch up your intensity. Doing more repetitions at the same weight, doing fewer repetitions at a higher weight, doing more sets, decreasing your break in between sets; these are all ways of varying your intensity, and more importantly, they actually work. Progressive resistance forces your brain to adapt to new loads and gain in strength, unlike exercise variation, which endlessly forces it to start over so that you never really make any gains.
I've seen plenty of articles that scientifically debunk new fads in exercise as no more effective than the old.
I remember an article about those new shoes that are supposed to burn more calories by altering your gait; in the end, the study found that altering your gait forces you to walk in a new way, and thus causes you to feel more soreness, but ultimately altering your gait had no effect on calories burned nor did it improve your cardiovascular health more than those using ordinary shoes.
The problem is that the fitness industry is constantly trying to reinvent the wheel, inventing new exercises, new equipment, new techniques, new diets, new movements - all in an effort to convince you that you need to purchase more things from them, so that they can make more money. Sure, it maybe helps you get more fit in the long run or is useful in some situations, but this is secondary for the person selling the product.
Powerlifters, olympic lifters, bodybuilders, and strongmen grow big and strong by practicing the same few, large-muscle-group exercises over and over again, continually getting a little bit better over time. The simpler you go, the more chances you offer your brain to adapt to your exercise, building real strength. Ultimately, given the fact that you know the right form and how not to injure yourself, it's not about how smart you exercise, it's only about how consistently you’re able to train over time to keep getting results.
A consistent, constantly scaling program is ultimately the key to success, no more and no less. Learn to stop being bad at a lot of things and instead be good at just a few. My own progress has always been best, when I’ve been able to tune out the doubts and misgivings, and focus on just hitting the same training over and over again consistently for long periods.
My advice:
Pick 3-5 major movements you want to get good at, and practice them a minimum of once a week each
Scale your reps, sets, and weight over time as you get stronger
Only change exercise variations if you need to, and don’t feel compelled to change just because you’ve heard about something new
Don’t get distracted
About Adam Fisher
Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.
During that time he has coached thousands of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.
Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.
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