Change Your Exercises for New Muscle Growth
March 10th, 2007The human body is smart, it adapts rapidly to a routine and it likes to follow the path of least resistance. It is for these reasons the body will become accustomed to any weight training routine done repetitively without change. Even though you may never miss your workouts and eat all the right foods, if you stick to the same training routine without mixing it up on a regular basis you will never be able to stimulate your body into a new level of muscle growth. What you will do by training with the same routine over and over again is basically stay at the same size and strength. Without changing your routine you will not change.
It is so easy to get caught in a routine and often you may not even be aware you are engaged in the same monotonous routine since it has become a habit. We you first start training with weights your body responds rapidly if you eat the right diet. Although after a while you may think there is something wrong since you continue to train just as frequently but your body no longer seems to be responding or you feel as though you have hit a sticking point or plateau. When you reach this plateau and your muscles are no longer getting stronger or bigger, although you are still eating well, this is a sure sign your body has become accustomed to the old training routine. The good news is this problem is easy to fix.
When your body is healthy but you are no longer seeing any real results from your workouts anymore you can solve this problem by changing your exercises around a bit. Lets say your normal chest workout is the following:
Flat bench press 3 sets x 10 reps
Incline dumbbell press 3 sets x 10 reps
Pec deck machine 3 sets x 10 reps
Try switching to the following workout next week
Cable crossovers 3 sets x 15 reps
Decline dumbbell press 3 sets x 15 reps
Inline dumbbell flyes 3 sets x 15 reps
Then the following workout the week after that
Pullovers 3 sets x 8 reps
Flat dumbbell flyes 3 sets x 8 reps
Weighted chest dips 3 sets x 8 reps
Machine press 3 sets x 20 reps
What I am trying to get at is you need to keep training hard and pushing medium to heavy weights till failure during most of your workouts but to continue to grow and break through sticking points in your growth you need to CHANGE, CHANGE, CHANGE. When I say change I mean change everything, change your exercises, change the amount of reps you do for each set and you can even change the length of time you have a break for between each set. One week you may limit your break between sets to no more than 30 seconds, the next week you may decide to do low reps but lift your heaviest weight for each exercise but have a 90 second break between sets.
Not only is change important to keep you from hitting a plateau and continuing to get bigger and stronger, it also helps you to enjoy your workouts more. If you do the same exercises in the same order week in week out it gets kind of boring and after a while the inner challenge you have with yourself is no longer present as you begin to feel stale. By continually changing things for each workout I personally enjoy my time in the gym much more and feel like I have to face a new mini challenge against myself each week. You could also try German volume training to mix up your workouts even further.
So when you hit the training wall and cannot seem to get past that awful sticking point, try mixing things up a bit and keep doing it on a regular basis and you will probably find your body will quickly respond well to the change. Since the body so easily adapts to certain routines it is up to you to keep tricking your body into growing more muscle. This technique of changing your workouts for more growth and strength is not only confined to weight training, this technique is used by all athletes to improve their performance.
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