by Mike Geary - Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer
In one of my recent articles, I
spoke about the fact that you must alter your training variables that
make up your workouts if you want to continuously get good results,
whether it is losing weight, building muscle, or toning up -- Exercise
Variables for Breaking Plateaus
While changing your training
variables is an integral part of the success of your training program,
your workouts shouldn’t be drastically different every single time. If
you are all over the place on each workout and never try to repeat and
improve on specific exercises for specific set and rep schemes with
specific rest intervals, then your body has no basis to improve on its
current condition.
The best way to structure your
workouts to get the best results is to be consistent and try to
continually improve on a specific training method for a specific time
period. A time period of 4-8 weeks usually works best as your body will
adapt to the specific training method and progress will slow after this
amount of time.
At this point, it is time to change
around some of your training variables as I described in the "exercise
variables" article, and then stay consistent with your new training
program for another 4-8 weeks. To refresh, some of these variables are:
- the numbers of sets and reps of exercises,
- the order of exercises (sequence),
- exercise grouping (super-setting, circuit training, tri-sets, etc.),
- exercise type (multi-joint or single joint, free-weight or machine based),
- the number of exercises per workout,
- the amount of resistance,
- the time under tension during each exercise,
- the base of stability (standing, seated, on stability ball, one-legged, etc.),
- the volume of work (sets x reps x distance moved),
- rest periods between sets,
- repetition speed,
- range of motion,
- exercise angle (inclined, flat, declined, bent over, upright, etc),
- training duration per workout, training frequency per week, etc.
This time you choose a classic 5 sets of 5 reps routine, but you group your exercises in tri-sets (three exercises performed back to back to back, and then repeated for the number of sets). This time you decide to perform the exercises in the tri-set with no rest between them, and then recover for 2 minutes in between each tri-set to fully recoup your strength levels.
There you have it…a couple examples of how to incorporate both consistency and variability into your training programs to maximize your results. Want to take the guess work out of all of this? Pick up a copy of my internationally best-selling Truth about Six Pack Abs program and try the scientifically designed programs already illustrated within.
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