Changing Your Workout Routines 

If Nothing Changes, Nothing Changes
By Bill Hebson

This simple phrase illustrates what I consider an essential physiological truth.

The critical need for variation in your training routines

This is a classic flaw that hamstrings and impedes progress for many, many dedicated and hard training athletes.

At Workout America we strive continually to surprise and challenge the system by introducing new training elements and by manipulating the major training variables. We do this to insure continuity of improvement over the course of long term training. It also keeps things fresh, interesting and fun.

Do you find it’s not quite as easy as it used to be to make improvements and break through those plateau and training barriers. Well read on we have solutions and a plan for plateau busting.

There is solid science behind our methodology when we examine the body’s response or adaptation to training which is described as The General Adaptation Syndrome or Gas Syndrome in the scientific literature.

Hitting a Plateau
When we present the body with a new stimulus or stress we actually depress or knock the system down a little. As we repair and restore the system through rest and nutrition we repair the damage and super-compensate as a defense mechanism by putting a little extra in the bank. That’s like building muscle or a callous. Now if we continue to present the same repetitive stimulus to the body we ultimately cease to adapt and progress stops. We plateau or even decline if we do not change the stimulus. Hence the critical need for variation.

So what I normally see in the gyms is that the only variables anyone ever tries to tweak are intensity and duration. We just try to do it harder or do it longer.
In other words more weight or more reps. This very rapidly becomes a process of diminishing returns and we hit the wall. We burnout or breakdown or merely plug along but fail to make much meaningful progress.

So what are the tools, the variables we can control and manipulate in our training environment to insure progress.

The American College of Sports medicine recommends we consider the following components in our exercise programming, the type of exercise, the intensity, duration and frequency.

That’s a little too dry and academic for my tastes. Let’s shake things up a bit here and have some fun with this. Here are some ideas to play with to build some real diversity and variation into your workouts.

How to Vary Your Workout Routines
So first let’s look at exercise selection itself. Forget about what your used to doing, we want to use elements from any and all athletic sources. We want to rock the system, try karate drills and the combative arts, dance, gymnastics, boxing, Olympic lifting, running, jumping, and agility.
We want to mix these different and diverse movements right into our conditioning and weight work.
Rather than a traditional pull down try several sets of rope climbs or monkey bar passes or pegboard ascents. Instead of a traditional machine row get a sprint sled load it up and tie a 20-30 foot tow rope to it and pull it as fast as possible to you across the floor. Put the ab straps around a tractor tire and pull it backwards.

For pushing work try layout ring pushups rather than benches, T-Stab or plyometric pushups over a medicine ball, tubing speed punches.
For core go to 3 minute heavy bag rounds with the gloves, medicine ball slams and scoop tosses, tubing baseball swings.

Mix plyo’s and SAQ drills in after each leg exercise.
You get the picture.

Play with sequencing. Giant sets, supersets whole circuits performed back to back.
Want a killer hamstring series. Try power snatches, leg curls, walking lunges, and one leg anterior reaches in one continuous circuit. Get ready to use the handicap bars in the john the next day.
For chest, try benches, clap pushups, cable crossovers and dumbbell pullovers in a continuous series.

Play with rep tempo and speed of movement. Try timed reps, or a timed series and try to increase the amount of work you accomplish in the same period of time. Want to dramatically increase the intensity of an exercise? Merely add speed. Try jump squats, split leaps, clap pushups, or speed pull-ups to light up the system.

Add level changes or rotation. Rotational dumbbell uppercuts, burpees, dumbbell squat clean and press, Turkish getups. All awesome.

Go Whole Body
Are you used to traditional body part training. Leg day once a week, chest day once a week. Scrap all that crap and go whole body six days a week for two weeks.
You’ll work like you never though possible. Try this simple whole body series as an example.

Whole Body Workout Routine
Bench blast by 20 reps, pull-ups to max, push-ups to max, compound front raises to laterals by 8 pairs, 20 squat jumps and 20 stability ball sit-ups.
Do all these in a series with no rest between each exercise. Just take a breath and go. If you can complete 3 or 4 rounds in a continuous loop you’re a monster.

I hope this provides some food for though and helps you contemplate your training in a new light with more latitude for creativity, spontaneity and fun.

You will most certainly change your body and conditioning for the better.