Muscle Confusion Cleared Up
By David Kathmann, MS, RSCC, CSCS, NSCA-CPT
Written on March 6, 2013
What is more confusing about muscle confusion is why someone
would want to confuse their muscles, confused yet? I’ve heard it many times
before that people think they need to trick their muscles in order to keep them
from getting stuck in a rut that will inhibit progress. Well I’m here to clear
up the confusion.
Muscles
don’t like to be confused, they want to know how you will stress them so that
they can adapt to the stress (e.g. your training) and become stronger and
bigger (to an extent). However, if
you don’t change anything with your training, then yes your muscles will go
nowhere because they have done their job in adapting to the stress you imposed
upon them. You know the sore
feeling you get when you start a new exercise, like squatting for the first
time for many people? That soreness is a necessary biological adaptation and is
called DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). This soreness occurs with
eccentric stress (the lengthening of a muscle under a load) and causes
microscopic tears in the muscle. The body detects these tears and sends in
white blood cells to clean up the mess (inflammation and perceived soreness)
and begins to rebuild the muscle stronger, so that when the same stress (e.g.
barbell weight) is applied to your body your muscles can handle the stress and
not break down. Basically, you’ve become stronger, more resilient to stress.
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Some know this feeling all to well the days after their first squat |
Now
that your muscles have adapted to the imposed stress of a previous workout, the
only way to cause them to adapt further is to stress them more. This means to
perform the same exercise, but now increase some aspect of your training that
your body isn’t adapted too. Now
here is where a lot of people start training incorrectly or are given incorrect
information from an inexperienced personal trainer. They perform the same exercises with the same weights, sets,
and reps, but this time they don’t get sore. So, what do they do next time? They enormously increase
something in regards to weight, reps, or sets. The next few days leave the
trainee crippled in soreness; as well as drain the neuromuscular system
(nervous system controlling your muscles). This type of training is not only
painful, but gets no results and could eventually lead to injury.
Constant
soreness should not be an indicator of the effectiveness of a training program.
The body can only handle so much stress before it breaks down. This can be equated to driving a
car. If you constantly drive a car
in the red zone of its tachometer, what will eventually happen? The car’s
engine will blow up. The same goes for you body; if you constantly train hard
and stress the body too much, in the equivalent red zone of your body,
eventually you will “blow up”.
Here
is what should happen after the initial soreness has subsided. Since your body
has adapted to the previously imposed stress from your last workout, you should
increase some aspect of your training gradually (linear progression). For example, this could mean increasing
your squat weight by 5 – 20 pounds total, adding in another set, or increasing
the reps by 2 or 3; but only choose one.
This will stress the body again and cause it to adapt to previously
unaccustomed stress, but not leave you cursing the stairs the next few days.
You continue this process until programming must be more meticulously planned
in order to keep progress going.
You’ll notice that along the way you’ve made some incredible progress
and weren’t really that sore, but why? Because you didn’t trick your muscles. They (the muscles) knew exactly what they had to do in order to keep getting
stronger and, depending on nutrition and hormone status (sorry ladies, but the
myth that you will gain an incredible amount of muscles size has been busted
time and time again due to the lack of testosterone females produce), bigger.
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No more excuses ladies: "Strong is the new skinny!" |
Would
this strength and muscle size progress occurred if you tricked your muscles
every workout or even every other week? Not even close. All that would happen
is that you’d be constantly sore and frustrated by the lack of progress. If you
constantly confused your muscles by performing new workouts each time you
stepped in the gym or new exercises every couple of weeks and abandoning the
old ones, then you basically start at square one each time you change your
training routine. You make no progress if you are always starting over, but you
will be sore. However, variations of certain exercises have their place and if
you don’t know where that place is yet, then you need to worry about getting
stronger first.
People that have trained with us at Pro Fit Strength and Conditioning can attest to
the incredible progress they’ve made with their training. Not only can our
clients mentally prepare for their training session by knowing what to expect,
but (aside from the initial learning stages of training) aren’t always sore,
while crushing personal bests with their weights. It is this consistent
progress that keeps people motivated and, yes, it may be more fun to keep things
fresh and new with each workout, but save that for something like a conditioning
circuit. In the mean time,
continue to progress on the exercises your muscles can expect you to train and
relish in your continued progress each time you set foot in the gym.
Disclaimer: All photos in this article are not property of Pro Fit Strength and Conditioning and are intended only for visual entertainment.
2012 Pro Fit Strength and Conditioning www.pfstrength.com
