Muscle Confusion vs. Progressive Overload
Understanding the concept of progressive overload for improvement is very important when discussing training. Unfortunately the idea of “muscle confusion” has a lot of people confused about what exactly effective training and programming is.
Changing your workout from one session to the next without monitoring volume, intensity, or frequency will quickly lead to a plateau in improvements, leaving you guessing what exactly you might be doing wrong – after all your creating as much “confusion” for the body as you can, doesn’t that mean you should still be getting better? For GPP, various workouts and bouts of exercise with no real goal or objective can be a good way to simply stay healthy, maybe, but for the athlete and individual with a purposeful goal in mind, we must have a more structured understanding of what we are doing and a well thought out program to follow. Otherwise we are throwing a dart at a board after being blindfolded and spun in a circle…
This is where quality coaching comes into play. If your training isn’t progressing, if your not getting faster, stronger, leaner, or bigger, then check your programming — or your coach — you might need a more educated and well rounded approach to your training plan.