Empower Your Workouts...Muscle Confusion

One of the most basic, and most important of the training principles, is the muscle confusion principle. This principle is all about ensuring you have a variety in your workouts. This will be a variety of sets, reps, exercises, rest periods, etc...

It is also important to train the muscle from the most efficient position, in which it has the greatest mechanical advantage/stress. It remains critically important to supplement those exercises with others utilizing various angles for certain exercises. Muscles should never be allowed to accommodate to an exercise to the point where the exercise is ineffective and doesn't result in hypertrophy or the goal you were looking to achieve. This variety will improve your motivation , keep you mentally fresh, and keep you muscles growing. Muscles become accustomed to a training program very quickly. We need to develop different exercises and perform a variety of sets and repetitions. The best way is to "cycle" your training program, typically in four week cycles.

By cycling or changing your training program every four weeks, your muscles cannot become used to the exercises. This forces your muscles to grow quicker than with any other training method. That is why muscle confusion is such an exciting and Empowering training principle.

One way to use muscle confusion is to vary the exercises. For example, if you were doing dumbbell flat chest press, you could use hammer strength flat machine one week and then the following week you could do barbell flat chest press. While you are still working the middle chest muscles, you are hitting them from a different angle of attack. This will stimulate new muscle growth.

By using the muscle confusion principle you are guaranteeing yourself consistent results in your fitness and resistance training workout.

I have included three tips to help you in using the muscle confusion principle:

1.] Change your exercises every four weeks.
2.] Use free weights, cables, or resistance bands in your workout.
3.] Vary the repetitions and the number of sets you use.

By following these three tips you will get the maximum results from you strength training workouts. Use the muscle confusion principle in your training program...it is Empowering.

Remember the three most important components of gaining muscle size are: proper rest, proper nutrition, and hard training...every set to exhaustion...this is Empowering!