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ISSUE 19 | NOV 2014 |
21
We have all been there. You start your
new exercise kick with a shiny new
tracksuit and a spritely willingness
to get to the gym by six a.m. Over
the next few weeks, your self-
congratulatory grin is amped by all
the people who are patting you on the
back, or the biceps, depending on how
well things are going. You are shedding
weight and wondering if you should
get your back shaved for summer.
Fast forward a few months, though,
and things look different. Gone are the
days of big gains and rapid changes.
Where once you were continually
racking up the weights, now you have
been sitting on the same numbers for
weeks. You feel you might vomit if you
have to do another forward lunge.
So you grab a copy of a fitness
magazine and there is the answer.
Your muscles have worked out what
you are up to and have decided they
no longer want to allow you easy
gains. They got used to your program.
They are now just going through the
motions, hoping you won’t notice that
they are phoning it in, waiting for you
to shower and get the hell out of the
gym so they can kick back. What you
need to do is change your program.
Like most topics in the world of
exercise, not everyone is buying this
argument.
“Muscle confusion” is a term knocked
about in both the gym and the offices
of muscle magazines, but just how
a muscle gets confused is difficult to
say. You can hardly give it a rubik’s
cube or ask it to solve an equation.
Muscles have the mental acumen of
a rubber band: they are hardly crafty
adversaries. With that in mind, there
is a large segment of the exercise
community that believes you should
just stick with your regime and put that
lack of gain down to lack of will.
The non-change party makes the
simple argument that if you persist
with the same regime you will
inevitably make incremental gains.
While they acknowledge the body can
adapt, throwing out a perfectly good
system is counter productive. In fact,
it can set you back, as in the first few
weeks you will be testing the new
system and will not be functioning
as smoothly or to your maximum
capacity. They claim that the concept
of change-ups was invented by the
powerful Exercise Magazine Lobby
in an effort to sell more press. After
all, they have plenty of pages to fill
between ads for muscle supplements.
However, it is hard to argue with all the
exercise professionals throwing their
voices behind the idea that change
makes exercise work. These people
tend towards the ripped: their biceps,
if not their science, should be heeded.
They make the argument that the
body adapts to any physical challenge,
and changes are required to keep you
gaining size or fitness.
The answer to the question of whether
you need to change your program is
somewhere in the middle.
Changing every other week is
obviously nuts. You just get used to
a system and then you have to start
again. You lose time in the gym as you
stand there, slack jawed, looking at the
latest program and wondering what
a sideways lateral raise actually is.
Your body cannot get the most out of
a series of exercises that you are not
familiar with.
But keeping the same thing going
for months and months is equally
dangerous. Newness at the very least
makes you think about the exercise.
You form is generally good and you
have got the impetus to improve. The
same exercise over a long period can
lead to complacency and corners being
cut. Moreover, when you start getting
too familiar with a program you might
start fiddling with the exercises you
don’t like, throwing them out because
you just don’t like them. And often the
exercises you like least are the ones
you should be doing.
The trick to keeping things fresh is
two-fold. First, you should constantly
be cranking up the output in your
exercises. Your body responds to
increasing increments of effort. This
ensures greater fitness or mass,
depending on your target. We tend
to ‘plateau’ roughly two months into
a program, and this is often because
we tend to push up to the next level
too early. Making smaller increases in
the level of intensity means you have
someplace to go later down the road.
Hit your maximum level too early and
you will sacrifice improvement.
Second, you should make relevant
changes to your program while
keeping the same overall structure.
An example is in weight training. You
might start out doing 3 sets of 8 for
each exercise. After a few weeks, try
doing 4 sets of 6. You are still doing
24 reps total, but the change will
freshen things up and make it more
interesting. Lower reps per set means
you can do a larger weight, which will
help too.
With cardio, try swapping through
different machines: bike one week,
treadmill the next. Or instead of a half
hour run, jog for 15 minutes and then
engage in some high-intensity interval
training.
The reason sports science is so
contentious is that everyone has a
different response to exercise. What
works for you will not work from the
person puffing away on the elliptical
trainer next to you. Therefore you
need to invest in finding a system that
you enjoy and helps you make gains.
Like finding a life partner, it is not
easy. And like a husband or wife, you
would be crazy to get rid of them just
because your heart has stopped going
all aflutter when you see them. Make
some little, constant changes, and you