When to Change your Workout Program

Before starting any muscle-building program, your first step should be to understand how your body goes about building muscle. No, you don't need to be biophysicist - but a basic understanding of how your own body works is critical if you want to achieve maximum gains from your program.

Muscle Growth 101
Simply stated, muscle growth occurs as a result of the repairs that are made to muscle tissue that's been broken down by exercise. It's known as hypertrophy, which is the increase in size of the tissue by increasing the size of the cells in the muscle.

Part of the process of selecting the right exercises is to identify your goal. Are you after greater strength? More bulk? Both, perhaps? The sort of hypertrophy you're after will be key in developing the best workout program to achieve your goal.

Hypertrophy doesn't occur overnight, of course. You have to design a plan that will meet your needs and goals, addressing each necessary element. Part of that plan needs to be regularly changing your routine.

Why Do I Need to Change my Routine Regularly?
Our muscles have a memory of sorts, and they become accustomed to the same routine movements and exertion levels. They'll become accustomed to repetitive use, and will work only the portions of your muscles that are required for your workout. In other words, they get lazy, and will do only as much as you require of them.

When you don't vary your workout routine, the muscles adapt to it and your progress slows, then finally stops. You hit a plateau, and your efforts after that, without changing your routine, will be a waste of time and energy.

If you find yourself hitting a plateau, there are a number of things to look at:

• What exercises are you doing?
• How many reps?
• What's your intensity level?
• Are you taking enough time off?
• Are you eating properly?

These all play important parts in your program, and you can manage them to keep your program productive.
You can't expect any plan to work unless you actually have a plan and follow it! Realize that your muscles will adapt, and work modifications into your plan to overcome that. That's the way to avoid the frustration of hitting plateaus and to help you to reach your goal faster.

Just because the results you're getting today are fantastic doesn't mean they'll continue to work for you. Remember, the body you're training today is not the same body you were training last week. And different bodies require different routines.

How Often Should I Change my Routine?
There's no one-size-fits-all answer to that question, as there are several variables that affect both when you should change your program and what changes you should make. There are three major factors that you should consider, though:

• your fitness and performance goals
• the age of your workout
• the progress you're making

Let's examine these three to see how you should schedule your changes.

Fitness and performance goals
Depending upon how distant your goals are and how fast you want to achieve them, you may be able to adopt a routine that's less intense than that of someone that wants to be a superstar immediately. If so, you'll have more flexibility in how often you change your routine, as you may be able to get results from your routine for weeks or even for a few months.

If, on the other hand, you're really pushing, trying to get immediate results, your muscles will adapt more rapidly, so you'll need to change routines a lot more frequently - maybe every few weeks, possibly even every few days, depending upon your progress.

Regardless of your goals - bulk, strength or endurance - you'll want to periodize your workouts. For instance, you may be doing 3 weeks of really intense 20 minute workouts, then change to 3 weeks of less intense workouts for 30 minute periods, then a few weeks of low intensity 60 minute workouts. Keep your muscles guessing by modifying both intensity and duration every few weeks.

Workout age
If you've been working out regularly for several months or a year, you're probably going to need to modify your routine more often than if you had just started your fitness program. As you continue working out, the muscles "learn" the routine, and will put only as much into it as necessary. Changing up the duration and intensity keeps them from getting too accustomed to the routine, which can put you at a plateau. This is why you'll increase the intensity of your program as you go along.

Progress
By now, you should realize that your buddy of the same weight, height, condition and age will see different results from yours, with the same workout. We're all different, and even with everything else being equal, you can't expect to see the same progress that he will. Yours may exceed his or fall short. Get over it! The only results that matter are yours!

This is why tracking your progress is very important. Your muscles may develop and adapt more quickly or slowly than you expect, so the adjustments you make, and their timing, will be unique to you. Being instantly aware of a plateau will allow you to make rapid changes, which will get you to your goals with less lost plateau time.

Plan your work and work your plan! You need to plan your training phases in advance, making certain to address all aspects of your plan, if you want to reach your ultimate fitness goals. You may decide to modify various aspects of your program - duration, intensity or type of exercise. You may even decide to start an entirely new program. But you must change it, or you risk stalling and not reaching your final goal!
Stay out of your "comfort zone".

Meal Frequency, Optimal Meal Timing, Muscle Protein Synthesis Facts Video

This week I address the issues of meal frequency, eating 5 or 6 times a day, the best times to eat and muscle protein synthesis. After the video, be sure to come to my muscle building blog and learn more.

5 Things You Didn't Know About Good Nutrition

Everyone seems to have their own notion of what constitutes "good nutrition". High fat, low fat, high carb, low carb, carb back-loading, intermittent fasting, high protein, vegetarian, vegan... even the experts can't agree, so it's no wonder there's so much confusion.

A new diet fad seems to pop up every week, making the world of nutrition a maze that can seem to many to be impossible to navigate. But you don't need a degree in molecular biochemistry in order to figure out how to lose weight and build muscle -here's the straight story on what "good nutrition" is.

1.       Good Nutrition = Energy Balance

 The simple version is: if you consume more than you burn, you put on fat, and if you burn more than you consume, you'll burn off fat. But in reality, it's slightly more complex than that. You also need to maintain control of the proper energy balance.

If you restrict your caloric intake for a prolonged period, yes, you'll burn off fat. But you'll also reduce your lean body mass. That's why people that are after a set of killer abs sometimes just start looking smaller, even if leaner.

As I've said many times, diet and exercise work hand in hand, whether you're trying to lose fat or build muscle. But it's important to realize that besides those two important elements, there's a third - the interaction between the two, relating to energy balance.

In short, your program must be carefully choreographed, eating the right foods at the right time in the right quantity, while doing the right amount of the right exercises. WHEW! That's a lot to get right, isn't it?

2.       Good Nutrition must Provide Nutrient Density

First of all, let's be honest... it's virtually impossible to follow a strict diet 100% of the time. But occasional minor departures won't have a lot of detrimental effect. On the other side of that coin, though, occasionally eating the right foods won't have the effect you want, either.

That's where most people go wrong, from what I've seen - they assume that calories are calories, regardless where they come from. That is SO wrong!

Be realistic - do you really think that 500 calories of spinach or some other green is going to have the same effect on your system as 500 calories of pizza? Anybody that tells you it's the same is either lying to you or is an idiot.

3.       Good Nutrition can Deliver Body Composition Goals, Health and Performance Goals

Those first two should be fairly obvious to everyone, but the third one often doesn't receive the recognition it deserves. And believe me, it's important!

If you're working out like a fiend, but you don't find your performance improving significantly from week to week, your problem is most likely a lack of the right nutrition.

Sure, you may be burning off fat, hitting your body fat target. You're lean and mean, but your plateau doesn't seem to be moving. Why? Because you're tearing down muscle tissue but not getting the right nutrition to build those muscles up.

To make it plainer... if you eat junk nutrition, you can expect to get a junk body. About 70% of your results come from your nutrition, so if you're short-changing yourself there, you can't very well expect to get the results you want.

4.       Good Nutrition Brings Goals and Outcome Together

Everything else I've said here, you may have already known, but let me explain what I mean here. If I ask you if you have the body you want, most of you will probably answer no, if you're being honest with yourself. At some level, most of us want to improve some aspect of our appearance or performance.

Assuming you said no, then I would tell you to focus your diet choices on your goals. By "focus", I mean laser-focus! Make your goal a hard and fast target, and your diet a hard and fast path to hitting that target. If you're slack on your diet, that goal will keep slipping further and further away.

As an example, I have taken my own pre-packaged meal with me to a wedding. Trust me when I say that when an Italian does that, at an Italian wedding, it shows COMMITMENT! (It also raises a lot of eyebrows)  But I don't care, because I have a goal, and going to that wedding just got me a step closer, rather than setting me three or four steps back.

Make your nutrition your number one priority. Missing a day of workouts may slow your progress a little... missing the nutrition target can set you back... WAY back.

5.       Focus on Sustainable Nutrition

Don't fall into the trap of looking for a "quick fix" solution. There are tons of fad diets out there on the Internet that can supposedly help achieve this or that, but they're based on extremes, and they can't be sustained. You may show some results, but poor nutrition won't give sustainable long-term results.

 Final Advice

You've already heard, and probably practiced, the basics on how to achieve great health and a rockin' body - eat sparingly and often, cut down on sugar, eat lots of greens, etc. We've been taught some of that since grade school.

Just remember, when you see some "new" fad diet that's been around a short time, and promises fantastic results, there's an even better diet available to give you sustainable results. And it's been around for centuries. It's called the Good Nutrition diet. It can't be beat!

Realistic Muscle Gain Rates

In this episode of The Skinny guy Savior I address several questions including what are realistic muscle gain rates.