Muscle Confusion? I’m confused.
Recently the term “muscle confusion” has become popular. I’m not really sure who to blame for this.
First of all, muscles do not have brains therefore they do not get confused. Muscles receive messages from your brain then react. That’s it. There’s no higher order deductive reasoning going on in the sarcomeres of your muscle tissue.
People who use the term muscle confusion act is if they saw a muscle reading a philosophy book once and were able to mentally outmaneuver it.
This is what I hear when someone says they use muscle confusion:
“Hey – my bicep thought I was going to make it contract by doing a barbell curl. But I fooled it – I made it contract by doing a dumbbell curl! Ha ha ha! I sure outwitted my bicep! Woo Hoo!”
And back to reading the latest muscle magazine with the big pictures you go my friend.
I’m not really sure what is meant by muscle confusion, but I know ultimately it just means doing random crap. Do one thing, then do another, then another with no rhyme or reason. Don’t have a plan, neither short nor long term by which to go. Mix your strength training with your corrective exercise, your corrective exercise with your conditioning, your conditioning with your core work, your core work with your flexibility, your flexibility with whatever – it’ll all work out. As long as it looks cool and has a cool name.
I’ve learned many things in my career, and one of the most important things I’ve ever learned is this:
When it comes to exercise and conditioning, randomness should be avoided at all costs.
Understand that your plan will probably need to be tweaked – but have a plan.
There are no important gains in exercise that don’t take tons of practice and diligence. Nobody anywhere in life made significant progress on something either important or difficult without practicing their arses off. Don’t believe me? Read “Outliers” by Malcom Gladwell.
Diligence and practice should not be confused with repetitiveness, monotony, and tedium, however. It only means something should be mastered before moving on. Trust me: there are dozens of ways to make a push up tougher if you think you’re good at them.
And remember as far as exercise goes, if it comes easy, you’re probably wasting your time. Stick with what you’re doing as long as you’re progressing. If you’re getting results, don’t change anything.
For example, the program I had written for my small group clients was supposed to change on the first of the month. The problem with that was that everyone was still progressing on that program, so why change it - because we want our muscles to be confused? That sounds like something that someone who sells DVD’s for a living would tell you. A professional trainer – you know someone who actually trains people for a living – would say ‘let’s stick with what’s working’.
This is why you need experienced, educated exercise professionals. Not people who watched DVD’s as their educational resource and not people who think beating the crap out of you a different way today than they did the last workout is exercise programming. Any moron can do those things for you. Find somebody who’s read a book. Find someone who’s read articles on programming individuals and groups.
Or, even better, find someone who’s written those books and articles and train at their facility.
