10/08/2020
Great post. Really common misconception I hear in the gym all the time.
Take away point being that progressive overload/tension drives new adaptations, not changing exercises every workout/week.
Posted • Exposing The Muscle Confusion Myth
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Like most things in the mainstream, the idea sounds very plausible, but when a deeper look is done within the data, it just doesn't hold up
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The idea is pretty straightforward, if you continue to do the same exercises and routine for a long period of time, your body will adapt to the routine and therefore stop making progress
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So to fight this, we need to "confuse" the muscle by throwing variations at it all the time so that it can never adapt and will continue to constantly make progress
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While it's true that performing the EXACT same workout every week will lead to diminishing returns, this doesn't paint the full picture of what drives real results
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First and foremost, our muscles don't have any cognitive abilities. They aren't scratching their heads wondering what they're doing in the gym. Muscle tissue is completely mechanical and will only contract and relax
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Having said that, you do need to create a progressively harder and/or new stimulus for your body to keep making progress; this is where science and marketing meet, but don't go down the same path
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You see, you could change your workout up every time you go to the gym and still never make any progress. Why? Because change doesn't drive results, progressive overload does
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Progressive overload simply refers to creating progressively higher levels of tension in your muscles over time to create a stimulus for new results. This normally comes in the form of adding weight on the bar each and every time you enter the gym
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The thing is, that IS a new stimulus
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If you bench pressed 200lbs this week, and you bench press 205lbs next week. That is a NEW stimulus. The new stimulus didn't come from changing the exercise and "confusing" the muscle, it came from changing the intensity
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Put another way, results don't come from changing your exercises, they come from making them more difficult then they were last time.
