Muscle Confusion Due to the recent success of the P90x series, an old but effective principle has become popular once again. Muscle confusion is one of the most basic, and most important of the training principles. This principle is all about ensuring you have a variety in your workouts. This will be a variety of sets, reps, exercises, rest periods, etc. It is also important to train the muscle from the most efficient position, in which it has the greatest mechanical advantage and stress to the muscle, but not the joints. Also, it is critical to supplement those exercises with various angles or grips for certain exercises. Muscles should never be allowed to accommodate or build a tolerance to an exercise to the point where the exercise is ineffective. Using variety will improve your motivation, keep you mentally enthusiastic, and keep your muscles growing. Reading this you say wow, let me get started, and everything will work. Well, there is a downside. The basic principle of building mass means that you have to perform certain exercises for the specific area of a muscle increasing the resistance over a certain amount of time, with ample rest and nutrition for growth in between. Basically, if you are trying to use muscle confusion all the time with no set routine, you may burn calories but you will not add any significant muscle mass. Muscle confusion works best for general physical fitness programs or for breaking out of a plateau during a conventional periodization based program. With traditional programs that are planned around specific cycles, overloads, etc., it is possible to change a workout too frequently to experience non-optimal performance. Examples-(sample normal chest workout) Barbell Bench Press-3X15,12,10 reps. Incline Dumbbell Press-3X15,12, 10 reps. Incline Flyes-3X15,12,10 reps. Seated Pec Deck-3X15,12,10 reps. Muscle Confusion workout (Once every 4-5 weeks) Strip Sets Barbell Press-5 sets 5,7,10,12,15 (start with 5 10lbs plates each side strip one away for every set completed, no rest in between. Push-Up, Ball, or TRX workout- 5X25-50 reps for different grips or hand positions (Wide, Normal, Close) A workout like this should be performed for at least 3 weeks so the muscles adapt and can enable proper growth. Now, after 3 or more weeks if you have been trying to increase the weight and reps and you are stuck in a plateau seeing no gains, then a mix up is in order. Now, changing things up can be as simple as switching from barbell press to dumbbell presses. Same exercises just a different means, but enough of a change to stimulate growth. If you don’t have any dumbbells then try a strip set or drop set doing 5 sets of 5,7,10, 12, 15, while stripping off weight as you go. Another shocker could be a entire chest workout around a suspension trainer (TRX) or even a bodyweight workout such as push-ups using varying grips (close, wide, normal) or even using balls (medicine, bosu, exercise) to blast chest. My suggestion is to only use workouts like this once every 4 to 5 weeks. It is high intensity, calorie burning, but nothing I would recommend to do week in and week out, unless you are looking to burn a lot of calories and drop weight.
…For more information and tips, check my website, www.chadamartin.com. Thanks to Universe Gym for supplying equipment for this show.