When I was younger and new to bodybuilding, I bought into the “changing your workouts will speed progress” mantra. I was hungry for muscle gains and eager to try anything the experts told me would make it happen. I first changed my routine about every twelve weeks. Then I began changing it every month. I topped it off with changing it every week.
What did all this ‘changing your workouts’ activity do for me? Well, it helped me to think I was gaining muscle. The constant change in my workout routine had my muscles sore. I was convinced I really had the tissue “guessing.” My muscles seemed to be pumped, that is… until I was two hours out of the gym and they’d deflated back to their non-worked-out size. The real problem came a few months down the line. That’s when the “changing your workout routine” was revealed as the farce that it is; my physique didn’t look any better than it did before I’d put this brilliant wisdom into practice.
I’ve long dumped the ‘changing your workouts’ for “better results” theory. Don’t get me wrong – I’ll replace an exercise here and there when I find a move that targets the area better than what I’d been doing. But changing your workouts… as a cornerstone principle… that’s supposed to build more muscle… simply because of the… change? I don’t buy it. And my rational thinking capability gets annoyed when someone asks me to.
‘Changing Your Workouts’: Using this as a principle with the expectation that it will speed bodybuilding progress can deflect your focus from the real determinants of progress.