Consistency And Variability In Your Workouts Are The Keys To Success

By Author: Robert Locke
Total Articles: 8
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I wrote recently about changing your training variables when you workout so that you are not always doing the same old routine. This is an important consideration if you want to get consistent results in gaining muscle, losing fat or just toning up your body in general.

Now you may want to change your training variables every time you workout but you have to remember that if you change your workout drastically every time, this could have a negative rather positive result. If you are not trying to improve on specific exercises for set and rep schemes with rest intervals, then you are not building the basis for improving your body. If you are consistent and try to improve on a set training method for a specific period of time, then you will get the best results. Usually a period from 4-8 weeks is your best bet as this will give your body time to adapt to the training method you use.

Time for a change- but not a complete change! If you are reaching a plateau , say after 6 -8 weeks, then you will have to consider varying your whole routine and introduce new variables. Once you have decided on these you ...
... will have to stay with them for another period of 4-8 weeks. Just in case you have not read my article on training variables, these are some of the main points I wrote about. The order in which you do your exercises. You can change round the order - it will make life more interesting ! Then you can consider changing the exercise grouping - that is, whether you want to do tri-sets, super-setting or circuit training. You can consider changing the exercise TYPE - i.e. whether machine based or free weights. How about your stability base - you can change to standing, sitting, one-legged a stability ball. Then there are rest periods between sets, repetition speed and exercise angle (inclined, declined, flat or bent over). Last but not least, you may want to change the duration of your workout and vary also the frequency - two longer sessions or three shorter sessions and so on.

Let us look at a practical example. If you are smart, you will be keeping track of your program in a notepad which will record in some way your weights used, sets and reps. Let us imagine this is the program you are doing :- Six different exercises grouped together in pairs and these are done as supersets. You do 10 sets of 3 reps for each of the exercises.. You have a rest of 30 seconds between each superset and no rest between the 2 exercises within the superset. After six weeks you find you are no longer making any progress so it is time to change your variables and start a new program which you will follow for at least another six weeks.

So how do your change the program I have outlined above? Go for a classic 5 sets of 5 reps routine but this time you are going to them in tri-sets. That means three exercises done back to back and then repeated for the number of sets. You can decide to do the exercises in the tri-set with no rest period between them and then have arrest for 2 minutes between each tri-set so that you can recover your strength.

What we have done is an example of introducing variables in your program but within a consistent framework and that will get you great results.