Too Much Variety

Training

15 Nov

Too Much Variety

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make in the gym is too much variety of the exercises they do.

I think it's been driven by the group training/bootcamp craze, which definitely has it's benefits, but rarely gets people many long lasting physical changes.

When we have too much variety we get pretty good and not being very good.

I understand the need for variety. We need to keep things exciting. But getting results is pretty exciting as well.

And so I believe most people do too many exercises in any given session and program.

How many exercises should people do each session? I believe 4 or 5 maximum. You could maybe increase this with a 10 minute circuit style conditioning block at the end of the session.

There are a few reasons people should do less variety in the amount of exercises they do each session:

When exercise selection is the only variable, it's the only thing that can be varied. There's no space in a session to try different variables.
It severely limits the ability to get stronger; while I understand strength might not be your goal, getting stronger helps every other goal and is one of the best things we can do for our long term health.
More isn't better, better is better. So when exercises are packed into a session, we get good at pacing ourselves for 45 minutes, good at sweating, we improve our fitness somewhat, and that's about it.

What would be best for most people is to reduce the amount of exercises they do, and use variables such as tempo, rest periods, volume and intensity to focus on improving a number of key exercises, with a bit of variety added in for interest.

The high intensity/bootcamp style could be done as one session in the program as a supplement, but overall a focus on less variety of exercises would allow for improvement in a greater number of ways while still achieving fat loss.

Until next time,

Marco