When you have been in the fitness industry as long as we have here at TOMFIT 24 hour gym you get to hear a whole bunch of awesome and creative training philosophies . You learn to become skeptical of any “ground breaking” training concepts and once you start understanding the various mechanism behind achieving positive results, you develop the ability to dissect the outlandish claims made by people in the industry who are trying to make a quick buck by sharing their “secret training routine” that “personal trainers don’t want you to know”.
Not all of these claims come from a bad place and many actually stem from people genuinely trying to help others achieve their health and fitness goals. However, whilst these claims are not always coming from a disingenuous place they could still be majorly holding you back from getting you to where you want to be.
There are far too many training myths for us to cover in one blog so today we will just be covering “You have to mix up your workouts to keep the body guessing!” Like many training myths there is a slight truth to it that has been overly exaggerated and in turn often ends up having a negative effect.
Lets start with the positives…Variation in training can be great tool to reduce the chance of over use injuries and add variety to your workout regime. Novelty stimulus can also help you maximize hypertrophy if utilised in the correct manner.
Now let’s get onto to the negatives… Mixing up your workout every session will not allow you to master any given movement. Weight training, like any sport, requires a skill and skill is developed through repetition. By repeating the same movements regularly you are able to become far more efficient at them and this will lead to a greater stimulus. Another limiting factor of the “you gotta mix up your workouts to confuse the body bro” philosophy is that it makes it incredibly hard to manage progressive overload, a fundamental for anyone looking to build any muscle.
The newer you are to weight training the more room you have to mess up whilst still making progress. This means that sure, mixing up your workouts every sessions may still lead to progress but it definitely won’t be maximising your time in the gym and sooner or later you are going to find yourself hitting a frustrating plateau where you are counting your reps in Spanish to really “confuse the muscles bro!”
If you have read this far then you are probably someone that wants to make the most out of their time in the gym and achieve great results by learning the do’s and don’ts of an effective routine. If that is the case and you are still feeling a little lost I strongly recommend investing in a great personal trainer. Think of your time with a trainer as an educational process that will set you up for a successful life in the gym. We have 14 world class perosnal trainers here at TOMFIT that will be able to set you on the right track and have you achieving great results whilst learning how to maintain/improve on them going forward.
