Muscle Confusion Workout Routines
There’s a lot of talk in the fitness industry about muscle confusion workouts. But do they really work?
In my experience as a personal trainer, I’ve had the opportunity to participate in and observe muscle confusion routines firsthand. And what have I learned? Let me tell you…
First, muscle confusion can be an effective method of weight training and muscle building. But it’s not so effective on an extremely frequent basis.
The Truth about Muscle Confusion
While it’s true that muscle confusion can jumpstart your efforts at the gym and challenge your muscles in new ways, changing things up too regularly can actually stall the training process. This is because some consistency is needed in order to create a functional training environment that encourages progress.
In other words, you have to give your muscles enough time to respond to each routine. There’s always an adjustment period, and things don’t happen overnight. This is why it’s important to stick with a routine until you start to plateau.
Generally speaking, muscle confusion can be effectively implemented about once every 4-6 weeks. This is enough time for your muscles to make some progress with your current routine, but not too much time that they stop responding to your efforts.
The following muscle confusion workout routines offer up some great options for avoiding plateaus. And these are just a few ways to approach things…
Muscle Confusion Workout Routines
Muscle Confusion Routine #1 – The Recombination
The goal of this first workout routine is to change up the muscle groups that you exercise together during a single workout. Since you’re not necessarily changing the exercises themselves, you can implement this change every 2-4 weeks. Here’s what a typical 6 week routine looks like:
Weeks 1-2:
4-day split consisting of Chest/Triceps, Back/Biceps, Legs, Abs/Shoulders
Weeks 3-4:
4-day split consisting of Back/Triceps, Chest/Biceps, Legs/Shoulders, Abs/Core
