What Is Muscle Confusion And Is It A Real Thing?
What is muscle confusion?, you ask.
Really, you don’t know what muscle confusion is?!
Like, you’ve been in a coma since around the mid-2010s when the term became popularized by P90X, CrossFit, BODYPUMP, ClassPass, and other branded workouts?!?!
Well, since that’s apparently the case, allow me to first congratulate you on coming out of your vegetative state.1*round of applause* That out of the way, now allow me to explain that muscle confusion is the idea that you should do different exercises every time you work out, with the thinking being that if you constantly vary your workout then your body will continue to adapt by making the muscles bigger and stronger in response to the unfamiliar demands rather than them becoming adjusted to the stimuli and reaching a plateau like when you perform the same routine over time.
That’s what muscle confusion is!
Now that you know what muscle confusion is, I bet you’re dying to know if it would behoove you to confuse your muscles by switching things up. After all, you hate this taking care of yourself shit and don’t want to unnecessarily prolong your having to do it by stalling progress. On account of that, not only does doing new movements every day or week sound like more fun to make working out less of a drag than having to do the same shit from workout to workout but it also sounds like you’ll get something out of your sacrifice of going to the gym, which doesn’t seem guaranteed by doing the same boring exercises on your boring training plan.
Well, it most certainly would behoove you to vary your workouts.
Yup, it sure would — just not in the way that was just discussed, that of changing your exercises in a complete overhaul of your workout routine from day to day or week to week.2Sure, you could do that if you want, but it would be stupid.
Yeah, that’s right…
S-T-U-P-I-D!!!
Constant variance by way of repeatedly swapping exercises and program hopping from one program to another is actually counterproductive because by continuously switching things up in that manner, the body has to keep learning or readjusting to new movement patterns, which doesn’t allow for the neurological adaptations to take place that precede the desired adaptations in the musculoskeletal system, a process that usually takes about 6-8 weeks to complete. That’s right, this is what’s going on when you perform an exercise for the first time and struggle with it but find that it’s easier and you’re able to use more resistance with each subsequent exposure. What’s happening is that you’re getting more efficient at the movement as your motor neurons figure out the best way to work. You won’t actually become stronger via a change in muscle until a greater number of exposures. Anyway, it’s for this reason why decades of research has yielded little to no evidence in support of this form of constant variance working. Constant variance doesn’t work, at least not that form of it in pursuit of muscle confusion.
What does work is the form of constant variance that involves progressive overload, which calls for simply doing the same workout with the same exercises. However, rather than performing those exercises as part of the same routine by using the same weight for the same reps, same sets, same everything, you gradually increase the weights, reps, and/or intensity session after session. Doing shit this way not only presents a continuous challenge to the body that it has to respond to via a change in size, strength, power, endurance, or whatever else, but it also allows for the all-important neurological adaptations to occur that must come prior.3If you’re confused here with the mention of neurology and don’t know what that has to do with anything, that’s because you obviously didn’t read the preceding footnote in which it was thoroughly explained!
With everything said, proponents of muscle confusion are right that performing the same routine over time will lead to stagnation. Where they’re wrong is that the solution is to completely change what you’re doing on a daily or weekly basis. Instead, the fix is to do nothing more than change certain variables about a routine while sticking with it for months, even years.4Yes, you read that right.
The length of time to remain with a routine is several weeks and months. That’ll provide you with enough data to know if it works. If it doesn’t, that’s when you should dump what you’re doing for something new. But if the routine does work, you should continue following it for as long as you continue seeing results from it, which may be years for well-designed programs with exercises that are systematically and consistently overloaded!!! That isn’t to say that you can’t spice things up regularly. If you truly crave variety, what you can do is maintain a handful of staple exercises that you do week in and week out while leaving room for exercises that you can change as you please. For example, if your leg day consists of 5 exercises, three of them could always be squats, leg press, and Romanian deadlifts while the remaining two exercises could be leg extensions and prone leg curls one week, walking lunges and seated leg curls the next, and so on. That way, you get the best of both worlds by consistently performing base exercises that go toward long-term growth and development and random exercises that provide novelty to satisfy your childlike need for endless stimulation.5This is the approach I take with most clients, as they do some of the same exercises every training session but there are a few new exercises sprinkled into every session to help keep things interesting because most of them don’t like working out and need variety to maintain their engagement.
So back to the original question of “what is muscle confusion?”
The answer is that it’s nothing more than a good way to sell product to people who don’t know any better. Just think about it. It’s hard to make money if someone can do the same workout every time whereas if you overcomplicate fitness and have people thinking there’s a constant need to change everything to see progress, you can make boatloads of money by creating an illusion of value through the provision of something new to do every day in your bullshit fitness program or during your crappy personal training session. Muscle confusion isn’t real and once you understand the profit motive, there’s nothing to be confused about as to why the myth won’t die the miserable death that it deserves!
Glossary: P90X, CrossFit, exercise, fitness, gym, intensity, leg day, leg press, muscle, program, reps, results, routine, squats, work out, workout
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