Muscle Confusion. Aaahh, muscle confusion.
The term “Muscle Confusion” is used in the fitness industry to describe an approach to exercise programming that has you frequentlyswitching various training modalities from day to day. Not to be mistaken with the approach of “never planned, complete randomness from day to day”. That’s a whole other ball of wax.
Muscle confusion, popularized by the extreme training program P90X (of which I put myself through for 6 weeks in my Naked Training Series), is still very much planned out. Planned out to be different everyday.
The idea is that you never give the body a chance to adapt and thus stall the eventual slow down of so called progress and results. By doing so, as the idea goes, it then forces the muscle to keep growing and the body to keep burning fat.
So it was going to be interesting for me, as one who trains in a manner opposite to that of muscle confusion to experience it hands on. Having trained much more specifically for quite sometime now, I was curious to see how it would effect me, physically and mentally. Whether I would find myself MORE amped having that variety from session to session.
For the first week it was fun because I was learning the program. So it was new in a sense (despite the fact that it uses all very common exercises). By the second week I settled in. By the third week is when I started noticing it. The frustration. The waning of interest. The seeping in of, dare I say, a sense of boredom. Now in most of the training that I regularly undertake (such as Clubbell Evolution, TACFIT, Gold Medal Bodies, etc.) once you hit this point, you don’t change what you are doing. You sophisticate it, taking you deeper and deeper to greater degree’s of proficiency, stimulation, progress and subsequent results.
With the constant changing from day to day however, your progress is much slower. Because your body DOESN’T have a chance to adapt and improve upon. It’s just starting to and then you take a quick right. So it starts to switch gears so it can now work on adapting to the new stimulus being placed on it. but before it gets a real chance to, you take a sharp left.
As many of you know, I’m a big proponent of training to live, not living to train. Your fitness should enhance your life, not take away from it. And while one would think that training in this great variety would prepare us better for the “variety” life constantly throws at us, it actually doesn’t. Because by trying to do too much, too different, all at once keeps us tethered to the surface. We are only able to remain at the surface or very close to it. Meaning, by dividing your energy and focus in too many varying directions we hinder both the degree and the speed to which we progress.
“Yeah but Shane, muscle confusion really does seem to work at getting people super ripped bodies by adhering to it.”
Right. The ripped bodies. The fitness model “look”. The surface. So there IS in fact a direct correlation between the two. Training a massive variety keeps you relegated to the surface of where you COULD get to with your fitness. And with that comes the “surface” results… if you adhere to extremely strict eating, don’t burn out, don’t get injured (because there will come a point where the results won’t be coming fast enough and you will train even harder to try and achieve them leaving you susceptible to overtraining and overcompensation or attempting far more difficult exercises that you are not proficient or prepared enough to perform).
In the end, the constant variety will also become boring because we are wired to reach to higher versions of ourselves. To advance, to improve, to be purposeful. And by remaining at the surface we lose interest because our fitness never amounts to the level of depth that truly inspires and motivates us.
Living in a day and age when we are bombarded constantly by variety of everything (and instant access to most all of it), do we really need to heap on a whole lot more? Do we really need to add more “chains” that will make it that much harder to move forward in our lives. Is it really beneficial never having to really COMMIT and constantly skirting the depths we are more than capable of moving towards. The lack of progress or motivation that so many of us feel (not just in our fitness, but in our lives) leaves us frustrated, angry, stressed and depressed (not to mention in pain and hurt).
Yet attending to our fitness and health provides us an opportunity. An opportunity to create a space in which we are able to focus (on aphysical task that is easy for us to see and feel whether growth is occurring). To go deep, to challenge and commit to the greater potential that lies within us. A chance to see where we can take it. To feel a real sense of accomplishment. To be able to say, “Hey, I’m really getting good at this. Where can I take this next?” And start bursting further forward than you ever have before, feeding on the fuel and energy that provides.
So you could train muscle confusion. You could add to the pile of what may still be feeling like not having broken free of a mediocre life you never meant to find yourself caught in. Or…
Dare To Evolve,
Shane.
*This blog post is associated with the Youtube Vlog Post “Naked Training”: P90X – D31″*
I’ve come to realize this over years. If you keep on changing what you’re doing, you never really get good at anything. It takes some time to master a skill. Sophistication, as taught in CST, takes this idea to a whole other level. Even now, when I’ve decided to spend some time on Convict Conditioning, with some mobility work and yoga compensation, I’m noticing better results in physique and movement. I believe it’s because I’m actually honing a skill instead of just jumping all over the place chasing “progress.”
I believe so many of us DO come to that realization. Only we don’t always know how to change that pattern or fear that somehow slowing down and focusing will have us fall way behind.
And CST as a system is STILL the most comprehensive and effective I have ever come across to give us the skills and the tools to be able to do so, if we should so choose. Because in the end, it comes down to us being tired of not getting anywhere and willing to take a “step back”, so we might make many steps forward.
Good on you Tzvi for creating that shift for yourself over these years and applying the template that CST has provided to other modalities. Because that is the true gift of CSt. Not just the programs that are created from it, but the overarching principles that basically make anything you apply it to, better. : ) All the best with the rest of your training cycle with Convict Conditioning!