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Does Muscle Confusion Work?
Filed Under: Building Muscle · Fitness and Health
Filed Under: Building Muscle · Fitness and Health
The short and simple answer is…………YES! YES! YES!
Muscle confusion is a technique used to stimulate maximum muscle growth and/or development. The actual idea is to constantly vary your training exercises and techniques to keep your body from adapting to your regimen to the point that your gains come slowly or stop. I have heard many fitness professionals say they believe in changing your routine every four weeks. My approach is a bit more radical than that. I believe that your routine should vary each time you work a muscle, with the exception of what I call foundation exercises.
Foundation exercises are those that work a muscle so efficiently that they should be performed every time you train it. Here are my foundation exercises:
1) Chest – bench press or d.bell chest press or pushups
2) Back – pullups and seated cable rows
3) Biceps – barbell curl
4) Triceps – dips
5) Shoulders – d.bell shoulder press
6) Legs – squats
7) Abs – rollouts
I include these exercises every time I work the corresponding muscle group. By tracking my routines in a journal (read the “best techniques to build muscle” blog for more on this), I can make sure I’m increasing intensity every time.
The rest of your routine should vary each week in some way. This doesn’t mean every exercise has to be completely different. Even a small change such as a different grip or sequence can be enough to give the muscles a new challenge. Make no mistake though, varying the exercises in your routine is one of the best ways to push your muscle fibers to the limit. Check out my online fitness videos, if you need some new exercises. You will probably pick up at least one new thing. Until next time……
Question then: Utilizing this technique, is it still recommended to allow a day between workouts for the muscle groups to recover?
Scratch my earlier question, I just read your post on best techniques. Great blog and I look forward to learning more!
Wassup Travis! Thanks for the comment. Glad you found your answer. Don’t hesitate to contact me with questions or concerns.
nice post thanks
i also believe in muscle confusion principle, but there a downside to that. sometimes it is hard to keep track of your progression (progressive overload).
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Actually,good post. thx
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is this the bes course to lose weight
This is very intersting, post more often!
Very well written post, do you have an rss feed I can subscribe to?
Great post – I agree, muscle confusion does work. I’ve been doing it myself for quite awhile and have gotten better results from this than anything else. I’m actually doing a 90 day program right now that I changed some from what I had been doing and I’m tracking every day what I’m doing and the changes that I’m seeing. Even after a week there were pretty incredible changes and I think after 90 days I’ll really be impressed with the results. I’m sure some of it has to do with workint out hard six days a week, but the muscle confusion is a big portion of my success as well.
As a medical scientist with 40 yrs of weights, I need to say that there is no scientific evidence to support the MC concept. Although muscles possess neuronal pathways, the overall components do not have any memory capacity and they are never confused.
There is value in varying exercises to stress the individual muscles from different angles and variety keeps the workouts more interesting but none of this has anything to do with MC, an invented term.
If you were working each bodypart several times per week, then one workout should always incorporate the most powerful exercise for each muscle group. For example: Chest; bench press, Biceps: EziCurl bar curls, Triceps: Close grip bench press or Skullcrushers, Delts: Seated bentover reverse flyes. Etc.
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I like muscle confusion for 2 simple reasons. It yields results time and time again and it keeps your workouts fresh so you don’t get bored with the same routine. I am an advocate of P90X and TurboFire that use muscle confusion. Thank you so much for bringing this topic to light. Great post!