Muscle Building: Why Switching Your Routine is a Good Idea
When you are working out to build more muscle mass, it can take some time until you find a routine that really fits you. Because of this, many people don’t like to change their training routines. You get used to your workout and switching to a different one just seems like too much bother.
The problem is that if you never change routines, your progress will slow down and eventually stagnate almost completely. In this article, I want to give you some no nonsense muscle building tips and briefly explain what happens when you constantly do the same exercises and show you how you can easily prevent the stagnation that comes from it.
If your routine always remains the same, you’ll soon notice that progress starts slowing down. Actually, it may well be that you keep making progress in terms of strength, but your muscles will stop increasing in size. The reason for this is intra- and inter-muscular coordination.
Intramuscular coordination is the coordination of the individual fibers in your muscles. If the fibers in the muscle all contract and relax in sync, then you are producing more muscle power, without your muscle necessarily being very big. Basically, good intra-muscular coordination means that you are moving your muscles efficiently. This is a good thing, of course, and it’s absolutely essential for any kind of sports performance. However, if larger muscles are what you’re after, then your goal isn’t really to increase the efficiency of your muscles.
Intermuscular coordination is the coordination between different muscles in your body. For example, when you do a simple movement like bending your arm (think: biceps curl), there are two components to that: one the one hand, a muscle is contacting and on the other hand, the antagonist of that muscle needs to relax. The more in sync and completely the antagonists of each muscle relax, the higher your intermuscular coordination. Basically, it comes down to not having any excess tension in your body and to making sure your muscles aren’t holding each other back.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with having good intermuscular coordination. Once again, though, it’s not really what you’re after if you are a body-builder and want larger muscles.
If you constantly do the same few exercises, your muscles learn to do those specific movements as efficiently as possible. Intra- and intermuscular coordination improve and habituation sets in. If you’re looking to build muscles quickly, you want to switch routines before too much of this happens. By mixing up exercises and routines, you keep delivering new growth-impulses and your muscles are forced to adapt in a more basic manner, by increasing in size.
Of course, if your goal is to improve your performance in a particular sport, that’s a different story. In this case, increased muscular coordination are welcome. However, keep in mind that it’s very specific to the movements you train, so you want to make sure that you’re making movements that are directly used in your sport, more efficient.
Here’s the simplest way to switch your routine: Simply change the order in which you perform the exercises. Same routine, different order. If you give it a try, I bet you’ll be surprised at how much of a difference it can make.
Loading ...