Keep the Body Guessing - True or False?

Training Bodybuilding
1

Just thought I’d bring attention to this idea which I find is quite prominent ‘out there’. It’s very similar to the “confuse the muscle” motto.

The theory goes something like this:

“You’ve got to change things up (like sets/reps/exercises/routines) otherwise your body will adapt and growth will slow down”

I don’t know about anyone else here, but the irony of this, is that this very ‘theory’ is exactly what held me back from gains as a beginner! I was far too worried about this so called growth plateau from keeping my routine the same that I tended to forget that little thing called strength progression!

I think it’s very important to explain this to beginners - the importance of rigidity (‘settle down’) and focus on strength increases every week in the medium to high rep range. Stop getting restless and swapping things up all the time! Ask the big guys (who’ve developed amazing strength in the medium to high rep range) whether they had to keep changing things all the time in order to get that big and strong?

Of course, if something isn’t working, you need to change it…but very often it’s something extremely simple:

First place to start is your routine - is it full of good multi-joint movements, not too much volume and is the bodypart training frequency right for you? Second place is food - are you taking in close to 2g of protein per pound of lean bodyweight and are you eating enough total calories? Third place is what I like to call the ‘rebound weeks’ to prevent build up of systematic fatigue - do you have a few days off from training, or a ‘light’ week every 6-12 weeks of solid training (depending on individuals needs/training and whether a natty or not)?

Anyway, you get the gist…discuss away :slight_smile:

2

P90X FTW!!!

3

While I believe in switching things up I also believe most make the switch before they actually should. For strength we know that several micro cycles work well powerlifters. As far as hypertrophy goes I think you should stick to your sweet spot rep range and sets and make a change every once in a while then go back to what gave the size in the first place.

Going super heavy or really high reps always gets me sore as fuck when I do switch it up. And, if I remember correctly (prolly not) a lactic acid build up and subsequent soreness has a positive correlation with gh release.

4

And Gregron, how the fuck do you have over 2,800 posts already? God damn sir.

5

I follow the DC principle of rotating exercises when I stall. This notion of “keeping the body guessing” is retarded though, as if your body knows you’re bench pressing or whatever.

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[quote]dnlcdstn wrote:
And Gregron, how the fuck do you have over 2,800 posts already? God damn sir.[/quote]

Lol… I’ve actually been a member since 2006 but it just says 2009 for some reason… And I’ve got a lot of free time lately

7

[quote]Rational Gaze wrote:
I follow the DC principle of rotating exercises when I stall. This notion of “keeping the body guessing” is retarded though, as if your body knows you’re bench pressing or whatever.[/quote]

Exactly.

I believe that you need to bring up weak points when they occur (so long as your routine isn’t severely lacking/imbalanced to start with), or target muscles using slightly different assistance muscles/motor patterns only when needed.

8

[quote]gregron wrote:
P90X FTW!!! [/quote]

Ha, haven’t come across that one before, but looks like what I’m talking about lol

9

I mean, isn’t adaptation what we want? You’re not going to get much out of a movement if your nervous system is inefficient at performing that particular movement. It’s not until that adaptation has taken place that you really force your muscles to grow.

Even just for the purpose of having benchmarks, I think it makes more sense to keep doing the same lifts. If something stalls or doesn’t feel right anymore, drop it for something else. Otherwise you’re better off changing up sets and reps, or at most making tiny tweaks to the lift itself (grip, angle, etc).

Save this muscle confusion crap for metabolic training.

10

Eh, I think it’s mostly hype to get people to buy into “A NEW ROUTINE EVERY WEEK!!! NEW NEW NEW!!!” If this were true, no one would do bench presses, quats, weighted pull-ups, or bench presses on a weekly basis. Thingsl ike Crossfit would weild the best results if this were true.

The same base routine works great for me, progressive overload, and when I get stuck in a spot, I usually just eat more Steak. 4-6 reps works for me, but if i can get 6, I’ll increase the weight by 5lbs then next set.

For instance, heres my normal chest routine:

4-5 warm up sets(reps: 8-6-4-2-1 weight acclimation)

2-3 Bench Press Sets, @ 4-6 reps

2-3 Incline Bench Sets, @ 4-6 reps

2-3 Weighted Dips Sets, @ 4-6 reps

Obviously smaller bodyparts like biceps would get lower volume like 4-6 sets total.

The only thing that really changes is the weight on the bar, or the amount of reps you get, as you get stronger.

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For me at least, switching the order of my first exercise is enough change for me to keep progressing. For the last 4-5 weeks I have been doing incline bench before flat dumbbells, instead of flat bench before incline dumbbells, and that is all the “guessing” my body needs at the moment.

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ronnie coleman would disagree…

he basically found something that worked for him and stuck with it for his whole career…

in his words “If it aint broke, don’t fix it”…

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[quote]D Public wrote:
in his words “If it aint broke, don’t fix it”…
[/quote]

That saying has been around decades before Ronnie was even born but he’s right… If your program is working, if you’re making gains in strength and size then why would you change things up?

Unless your goals change then you should stick with what works. If your gains slow waaaaay down and stall out then look at switching something up (reps, order, exercises ect…)

thats just what I think.

14

I really love Thibs thoughts on this subject and I am hoping he would chime in here because what he says makes a lot of sense at least to me.

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[quote]gregron wrote:

[quote]D Public wrote:
in his words “If it aint broke, don’t fix it”…
[/quote]

That saying has been around decades before Ronnie was even born but he’s right…

i know, man lol…but thats something he says repeatedly to that question when asked…

16

I remember reading loads of internet bought e-books (what a waste of money that was) in the past when just starting out, and none of them emphasised the importance of progressive over-load!

All the hype in the sales pages, and all the length of the books were wasted on the simple fact that they never drummed it into a newbie that it doesn’t matter how super duper the periodization scheme was, or how one repetition scheme may be better than another, or how many sets to do, lifting speed blah blah blah…none of that matters if the trainee isn’t getting stronger!

What was drummed into me as a newbie was that the dreaded plateau was just around the corner!!!

Mwahahahahahahahahaha!!!

Of course, it’s really only very advanced trainees who’re stronger than 90% of the entire lifting population that this sort of ‘fear mongering’ applies to…but no, if a newbie/intermediate stagnates it’s because his body has adapted! It didn’t matter if you were only benching or squatting under 200lbs, it’s not your fault! The reason why you’re not getting bigger is because it’s your body adapting (it’s nothing to do with food intake, or too much fluff in routine…don’t be silly!)…you need to swap something ASAP!

Obviously the people who advise keeping the body guessing all must be lifting close to 400/600 on the big lifts…obviously.

/end rant and sarcasm

17

Interesting thread.

Firstly, I thoroughly believe that if you are fine staying with a given exercise long term, no injuries, that will be fine as long as you keep progressing the relative intensity (keep lifting heavier). Play with the rep range, but keep the same movement, whatever, cool.

Now, the other theme of this thread seems to be changing for the sake of changing, or to create some form of needed challenge.

What this ties directly into is the specificity of skeletal muscle training. To contradict an earlier post, your body DOES indeed know that it is doing a bench press.

The classic example is that leg extension training can definitely increase quadricep muscle size and strength, but this has an extremely poor transfer to squat strength, vertical jump height etc. However, if we have a person of good-high strength across all the relevant squat muscles (quads, hams, gluts, back etc) who hasn’t trained the squat, what is likely to happen.

Well, at first they are going to suck at squatting, and it will take time to sufficiently adapt, or LEARN the movement. The big ‘mind-muscle’ terminology is what brospeak would use to explain this. Given time for this to happen, this given individual could easily become sufficiently effective at squatting.

The risk to this? Easy, the time delay in switching exercises could theoretically lead to a period of time where you are using less muscle mass, simply put a form of detraining where your actual muscle strength could in fact decline.

For newbs this is especially dangerous, cause their strength levels, and use of neural capacity, isn’t sufficiently developed to have a quick turnaround from exercise to exercise without things going backwards too much.

Call it an exercise transition lag (I’ll copyright that expression now). Hence the doing lots and going no-where that lots of us see the newB fish trainers, and often posters on this site, falling into the trap of doing.

Anyways, that’s probably bored everyone to death but I haven’t had a good thread rant in a while…

Happy training :slight_smile:

18

In my opinion bodybuilding is like any other sport or skill, in the sense that you must practice to get good at it. And as with anything else, the more you practice, the better you get, but it has to be productive practice.*

If you watch any professional bodybuilder train, you should notice immediately that they are technicians when it comes to connecting with a muscle and getting a pump, and they perform all of their exercises automatically with rhythm and confidence. They make it look easy and natural, as any high level practitioner does with their chosen skill.

I relate it to martial arts, because that is another sport close to me. In karate, at least at my shorinjiryu school, we practiced 3 different skill sets over the course of 3 different days. We split up the totality of our body’s ability to fight into forms on the first day, standup sparring on the second day, and ground work/throwing on the third day.

Every time you go in to train, you challenge yourself to be more accurate, more powerful, hit with greater speed, or use more perfect technique.

The reason this relates to bodybuilding is because, like bodybuilding, the specifics of what we do don’t matter as long as we still perform the basics, and we are still progressively overloading our bodies as much as possible within our recovery abilities.

However, if I tried to train karate on mondays, kung fu on wednesdays, boxing on friday, and so on and so forth in an attempt to confuse my body, I would do exactly that - confuse the hell out of it, and I wouldn’t get good at ANY of those things.

*TL;DR - As long as you are steadily improving on the basics, I don’t believe it matters tremendously what else you do, at least not until you reach an advanced level of development. You can keep your body guessing on the little stuff, or stick to the same old same old, as long as you don’t keep it guessing as to what skill it’s actually supposed to be getting good at.

19

The key in training in my opinion is obviously to get stronger, stronger=bigger.

BUT to be really strong in your main exercises you need to do them all the time, not changing everything from month to month. This is the fastest way to get stronger in one exercise. Like in fight sports - you need to train special combinations loooong time before you will make them automatically when you meet your opponent.

I obviously also train with different variations (but I change only grip width, bent degree, simple technical improvements etc) but when I find variation that works best for my body, I do this shit till dead comes.