Stop Changing Your Training Every Week!
Stop Changing Your Training Every Week!
Have you heard that you should keep switching up your routine to ‘keep your muscles guessing’? Muscle confusion is often pushed as a theory for speeding up your progress, but the truth is that constantly changing your training program will have the opposite effect.
Let’s discuss the five reasons why changing your training too frequently can sabotage your progress, rather than support it.
How changing your workout too frequently can stall your progress
It distracts you from your goal
A well-designed training program will be built to help you reach a specific goal. So if you’re switching that routine too often, it can hinder your progress. As a result, it actually becomes more difficult to reach that goal.
For example, say you’re working on building muscle. If you start subbing some of your training for HIIT sessions, that’s not going to do much for your hypertrophy efforts.
It can lead to burnout
If you’re altering your program every week, you’re putting yourself on the express train to burning out. Your body needs time to adjust to the demands of a new routine. So if you aren’t giving it that time, your body doesn’t get a chance to rest and recover.
This feeds into both physical and mental burnout. Your body is unable to recuperate, which can cause overtraining syndrome. But mentally, you also end up feeling unmotivated and unfocused.
However, this can be a balancing act. Constantly changing your workouts can lead to overtraining, but so can staying with the same program for too long. That’s where having a program that incorporates periodisation makes a huge difference – learn more about it here.
It’s often confusing
There is nothing worse than getting to the gym and forgetting what you did last week. But this is a big downside of constantly changing your training program. And of course if you can’t remember what you need to do, you end up doing workouts that are even more varied and inconsistent.
Make it easy on yourself and your body – stick to the same workout routine for the duration it’s been designed for.
It can make you less consistent
We know that consistency is the most important ingredient in any goal – particularly when it comes to fitness. When you stick to a program for a reasonable period of time, you give your body time to adapt to the stimulus. And this gets you better results from your workouts.
The best outcomes from your training can take months or even years to show. So it’s not unusual to feel unmotivated, but that doesn’t mean you should constantly change your workouts to chase results. Instead, focus on tracking your progress – learn more here.
It’s harder to track your progress
How do you know if you’re advancing in your fitness goals? If you’re altering your program every week or two, you’ll find it hard to track. You won’t have a clear idea of how your body is responding to those changes you’ve been making, which makes it hard to adjust where needed.
If one week you’re squatting, the next week doing leg press, and the following week it’s deadlifts, you can’t really tell if you’re seeing progress in any of those! But if you focused on squats for 6-8 weeks, you would clearly see the changes – does it feel easier, has your formed improved, do you need to increase the weight.
So when should you change up your training?
When I say stop changing up your routine, I don’t mean do the same exercises forever! There are times that it is appropriate to add some variety into your sessions. This can include:
When you see a plateau in your results, even though your nutrition, rest and stress are all sorted
If you’ve reached a particular goal and are switching to a different focus
When you’re becoming more experienced and are ready for a different training split
If there’s a significant change to your lifestyle that affects your ability to continue with your current training plan e.g. new job with different hours, an injury or illness
But once you make those changes, it’s time to go back to the consistent approach. Constantly switching up your workout routine is not just unnecessary – it can also set you back in your fitness journey.
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