The term Muscle Confusion has been a popular fitness related buzz word since the 1980’s and is especially used by bodybuilders but also relates to people who workout for other fitness goals.
I wanted to make sure there is no confusion surrounding Muscle Confusion in your mind.
The concept of Muscle Confusion is that you need to change your workouts every once in a while in order to prevent your body and muscles from adapting to your workouts. The idea is that if your muscles grow accustomed to your workouts that you will plateau, meaning stop getting results.
Muscles Are Brainless
Let me say flat out that muscles can’t be confused, tricked, dazzled, and so on. Muscles are brainless. It is just tissue made up of protein. To get consistent results you need to continually challenge the muscles by overloading them: putting enough strain on them to tear them during the workout in a way which will cause them to grow during your recuperation period following the workout (generally 1 – 2 days).
Therefore, it is of little matter to the muscle whether you’re doing push-ups or chest presses or any other workout as long as it’s hard and challenging.
Therefore, there is no such thing as Muscle Confusion. It’s basically a mythical term. However, it is not a useless term.
Mixing things Up can Be Good
As long as you don’t really believe that muscles can be confused, mixing things up in your workouts can indeed be beneficial since it’s a great way to challenge your body in new forms and make it harder for your muscles.
Here are Some things you can change:
- Number of sets
- Increase Weight
- Number of repetitions
- Type of exercises
- Exercise order
- Length of rest periods between workouts
Any of these can help you push your muscles to new extremes and get better results. Naturally, you shouldn’t make these changes every workout. Take at least a month before making drastic changes to your workout.
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