Vary Your Routine For Much Faster Results

By Author: Robert Locke
Total Articles: 8
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Have you ever reached a plateau in your training when you felt that you were going nowhere? You suddenly find that you are weaker and you have put on a few pounds ? And this setback happens almost overnight when a few days ago you were looking good, gaining strength and losing a bit of that awful fat. This happens to almost everyone so not to worry !

This article will help to broaden your mind, I hope, and show you some ways of varying your training routine. There are lots of things you can do to vary your training routines so that you can get the most benefit for building muscle and losing fat. Some people think that changing their sets and reps will do the trick. But how about changing the following :-

Change training frequency and time of training session.
Change exercise type - free weight or machine based, multi-joint or single joint?
Vary the amount of resistance and time under tension
Change your stability base - sitting, standing, one - legged ?
Shuffle your exercise angle - upright, bent over, inclined or flat?
Change your rest periods between sets and rep ...
... speed.
Change your grouping - go for circuit training, super- setting or tri- sets?

I know lots of guys who stick faithfully to 3 sets of 10-12 reps for each exercise. These guys look like they are on auto-pilot! Let us look at a few examples to help you get more creative:

How about 10 sets of 3 , with just a mere 20 seconds of rest between the sets?

Have you considered using a lighter than normal weight - try 1 set of 50 reps for each exercise.
Try to get for close to your maximum weight and 10 sets of 1 rep, with 30 seconds rest between sets.
Try a heavier weight and go for 6 sets of 6 reps and you can do a sprint on the treadmill for 3 minutes between each set of weight lifting.
Select one full body exercise - that would be , say, a dumbbell squat and presses. Do that exercise for a full 20 minutes. That is pretty intense but it does vary the routine.
Do a workout based on your bodyweight only - so go for the push-ups, pull-ups, chin-ups and dips. Add in a few squats and lunges.
Do a full circuit (12 different exercises) which cover the whole body -no rest between exercises.
Next time round, do the same as above but change the order round - last one first and so on.

Vary your speeds - on one workout go for faster repetition - on the next one go at dead slow speed
Try to vary your weekly routine - one week you can do three workouts of an hour each. Next week, change that to five shorter workouts of just 30 minutes each.
In this article I have outlined some of the many ways you can vary your training routines which will get you results faster and you won't turn into a gym robot!