A reader, KB from England, wrote in to ask a question about building muscle.
“I read in a fitness magazine that if you continue with a workout for longer than six weeks you’ll actually become less fit and less muscular,” wrote KB.
“Do I need to shock my muscles by changing my routine every six weeks? How long should Muscle Evo be followed before I need to change it?”
It’s a good question.
After all, the “change workouts every 4-6 weeks” mantra usually gets repeated in most of the popular fitness magazines on a regular basis as if it’s some kind of undisputed fact.
Maybe I’m being a little cynical, but the fact that such advice coincides with their publication schedule doesn’t seem to me an entirely coincidental one.
Let’s face it; the real reason most people are running around changing their routine every few weeks is because what they’re doing at the moment isn’t working.
You read something in a magazine or on the Internet and think you’ve found “the secret” to building huge amounts of muscle in the shortest time possible.
So you change your training program completely.
Then a few weeks later you read about something that sounds even better. So you ditch what you were doing and try this one instead.
Then one day you wake up and realise that 12 months has passed, you’ve hardly gained any muscle and you’re no stronger than you were this time last year.
The two main factors that stimulate muscular growth are progressive tension overload and metabolic fatigue. The simple act of changing exercises won’t automatically “shock” a muscle into growth.
Yes, it’s true that when you try a new exercise, you’ll tend to get stronger relatively quickly. But this isn’t because you’ve suddenly gained a lot of new muscle.
Instead, the reason people make rapid improvements in strength with a new exercise is that their nervous system gets better at recruiting muscle fibers.
In other words, when you change exercises, any increase in strength has more to do with the fact that your body is using more of the available fibers in a muscle. It’s not because the fibers themselves have got any bigger.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you should follow the same workout week after week, month after month. But nor does it mean jumping around from one workout to the next every few weeks.
In fact, there’s nothing wrong with using the same training template over time, but rotating exercises on a semi-regular basis.
However, as Muscle Gaining Secrets author Jason Ferruggia points out, not everyone has it in them to stick with such a program for any length of time.
“That was very doable before the Internet,” says Ferruggia. “Nowadays I don’t know how many people have it in them to do that. They don’t have the same focus or patience and lack the consistency. Everybody wants to try the next best thing or move onto advanced methods before they are ready. All that does is screw up your progress.”
“Many old school lifters didn’t do much else but a handful of basic lifts, 52 weeks per year,” he adds.
“And ya know what happened? They became some big, strong motherf*ckers.”
If you’re no longer a beginner and you’re still getting stronger, then your muscles are growing. Keep doing what you’re doing because it’s working. It’s only when those gains come to an end that it’s time for a change.
For fast muscle building workouts, take a look at my Muscle Evo Coaching Program.
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