We are surrounded by variety in our lives. Social media for instance is so darn addictive because we do not know what video is going to pop up next. That wonder or variety is what keeps us scrolling for hours on end.
Conversely, monotony has its very own appeal. I think of those silly mobile games that you get bombarded with daily. Once you play these games and go through its short play loop, that predictability that got you hooked soon wears off. You then move onto something else to get the same feeling of “new”.
We can find these parallels in the fitness world as well. When I think of variety, I think of CrossFit. One of the allures to CrossFit is the randomness of it. Clients know that they will be doing different things on a regular basis and that is what increases adherence. There is a social factor to this as well. You are most likely to maintain a training regimen if you are working out with familiar faces and working together towards similar goals
But…we cannot have complete randomness all the time. Science has shown us time and time again that periodization is needed to ensure that programming is of not only quality but also derives specific results.
We need repetition to learn movement patterns and build a solid foundation. More specifically, we need to perform exercises well enough to get a specific training effect-in respect to power and strength of course. Lastly, we need to be able to quantify these movements. Are we getting out of them the things that we need?
In fewer words…you need to have a plan. This rough draft when ran to completion should yield a specific product. If it doesn’t, then it is time to go back to the drawing board.
To write a good strength program you need to find a way to blend in variety and randomness.
I put the two above qualities in two separate categories:
Variety: Provides novelty and improves adherence. This engaging style is not necessarily “training”. I would classify this as merely working out.
Monotony: Not as engaging as you need to learn how to perform exercises correctly. Repetition is used to deliver a very specific training effect. This is called training.
Now.. I would like to point out that when trying to balance out the above qualities, a client’s motivation to train needs to be taken into account. New clients are going to need/want more randomness. Clients who have bought into training understand the benefits of not changing everything every day…
But…there is a secret!
Can we disguise monotony as variety?
We sure can!
A skillful coach can pick different exercises that will produce similar results. An example of this would be a 3 point stance dumbbell row and a chest supported row. There are differences between the two, but we are training the same movement pattern. And the outcome differential is negligible.
If you have a well trained individual and they desire very specific outcomes…such as play college football…randomly flopping around the gym and running miles and miles per week will not get you there.
What I found to be the best way to blend these two qualities is with conditioning work. Conditioning can be hard to quantify and the strength portions of a program is fairly easy to show progress. So…I will vary up conditioning using the rower, med balls, sleds, bike, sandbags and skii erg.
You can also switch up training implements. Use a kettlebell instead of a dumbbell or a SSB instead of a barbell.
In closing, I switch up my adult programs every 4 weeks and a lot of my athlete programs every three weeks. Of course, this depends on training age, goals and time to train. At the end of the day, consistency is going to be the best thing for you to progress in the gym.
