[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Good work!
A thing to watch out for though is to not go so far with this as some trainers recommend in their writings. (If your rates are in the thousands of dollars per hour, Daddy isn’t going to be so pleased if Sonny Boy isn’t making amazing increases every week, so a great technique for keeping Daddy happy is to switch exercises constantly so that the learning effect you mention can make it appear that amazing improvement is constantly being made.)
Pick some specific important exercises, let’s call them benchmark exercises, and never go too long without them.
For example, let’s say parallel box squats, you have decided, should be a benchmark exercise. (You might pick parallel regular squats, you might pick ATG squats, but pick something.)
Then you will have a reference for where your strength really is as you go, and not be fooled by apparently getting 10-20 lb a week stronger each and every week of the year, but somehow not being anything like 520-1040 lb stronger at the end of the year.
There are lots of very experienced lifters who, for reasons of constantly changing exercise or other reasons, swear that they “gain all the time” yet are, at best, lifting 50 lb more or perhaps not even that on major lifts than they were 5 years ago. But yes, they gain all the time… or so it appears to them anyway.
Picking some benchmarks for yourself will save you from their error.
For example, powerlifters don’t fall into this error. No matter that they might see great weekly improvements on newly trying DB Flyes Off a Bosu Ball, as well as a new triceps exercise, and then amazingly speedy improvements with some other new-to-them exercises, if their bench press only went up 5 lb in 3 months from all these weeks of amazing improvements, they know that the real strength increase was 5 lb.[/quote]
Bill: All good points. Honestly, I haven’t done back squats in years, as I got to around 245 for 6 reps and progress just seemed to halt. I started DL a lot since then, and I think because of increased strength in my lower back, my squat has taken off.
Muscle confusion eh training produces most excellent results - It makes no sense to do eh same routine ah week, aye - body adapts to shit most rapidly, and result forestalls due to poor preparation, aye! Aye well done, most certainly.