Why You Should Change Your Workout Routine Often
It can be difficult to find a workout routine that really fits your style and that you really like doing. Because of this, many people don’t like to change their training routines. You kind of get comfortable with your routine, after a while and changing things seems like a hassle.
The problem is that if you never change routines, your progress will slow down and eventually stagnate almost completely. In this article, I want to give you some muscle building tips and briefly explain what happens when you constantly do the same exercises and show you how you can easily prevent the stagnation that comes from it.
If you always do the same routine and the same exercises, your progress will stagnate. Actually, your strength may keep increasing, but your muscles won’t keep growing. The reason for this is intra- and inter-muscular coordination.
The coordinated twitching of the small fibers within any given muscle is referred to intramuscular coordination. The more in sync the fibers contract and relax, the stronger you are (without any difference in muscle volume). Basically, good intra-muscular coordination means that you are moving your muscles efficiently. This is a good thing, of course, and it’s absolutely essential for any kind of sports performance. However, if all your training for is increased muscle size, then improved intramuscular coordination isn’t really a great benefit, for you.
Intermuscular coordination is similar, but different: It concerns how well your individual muscles work together. Here’s a simple example: When you’re doing a biceps-curl, not only does your biceps need to contract, your triceps (the antagonist to the biceps muscle) needs to relax. If this coordination between the contraction of the active muscle and the relaxation of the antagonist work well and the timing is perfect, you have very good intermuscular coordination. In other words: Good intermuscular coordination means that your muscles aren’t holding each other back, when you are doing particular movements.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with having good intermuscular coordination. Once again, though, it’s not really what you’re after if you are a body-builder and want larger muscles.
If you constantly do the same few exercises, your muscles learn to do those specific movements as efficiently as possible. Muscular coordinations improve and habituation sets in. If you’re looking to build muscles quickly, you want to switch routines before too much of this happens. You want to make sure that you “keep your muscles guessing” so that they need to adapt by growing in size rather than just increasing their efficiency.
Of course, if you are training for sports performance, increased inter- and intramuscular coordination are desirable. However, keep in mind that it’s very specific to the movements you train, so you want to make sure that you’re making movements that are directly used in your sport, more efficient.
Here’s the simplest way to switch your routine: Simply change the order in which you perform the exercises. Same routine, different order. If you give it a try, I bet you’ll be surprised at how much of a difference it can make.