What's the Right Amount of Variety In Your Exercises and Program?
I find that all too often when trying to address this question, people draw really hard lines on both ends of the spectrum: some people believe progress only comes from doing the same thing repeatedly until you’re blue in the face, while others are more inclined to want to change every single workout. Who is right? It depends. Like most things, the answer tends to lie in the middle curve and not the extremes. It pays to be adaptable, observant, and constantly assessing.
One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that answering this question requires a little nuance. I find that there’s some advantages to both approaches depending on the training goal. What do I mean?
For volume work (ie: bodybuilding, hypertrophy focused work), I’ve used a lot of variety in exercise selection to great success, in many cases switching exercises each workout— however we keep the loading parameters and targeted muscles consistent for 3-4 weeks minimum. This keeps things fresh both mentally and physically and seems to hit the minimum volume that would be consistent with Schoefield’s studies and conclusions to get a certain muscle to grow.
For more intense work (powerlifting and pushing strength numbers), it’s a big case of “it depends.” This is where coaching and understanding the athlete/client is really important. I typically find myself at vastly different ends of the spectrum as I find what works for people.
For example: If you take a more conjugate style approach and switch your exercise every single week- some people excel. In less than 2 years, we added 100#’s to a client’s deadlift, taking it from 300# to 405# for an easy single (switching him to Sumo from conventional in the process), and using a variety of rep ranges, implements and lift variations each week.
Ex: One week would be straight weight from the floor for 5, the next week would be with chains off the floor for 3, and the final week would be off 3” blocks with straight weight for 3. It just depends.
Alternatively, some people need a few weeks with the same exercise, similar or the exact same rep ranges to really learn the exercise. For example, another group of clients best made progress week to week with the same bar, and weight/resistance curve for fixed reps, ie: they took 3-4 weeks on a bench press with the same bar for 5 reps, improving each week on the load and bar speed.
There’s a lot of reasons for the discrepancy: one thought offered by Charles Poliquin was the neurotransmitter dominance of the individuals. Dopamine dominant individuals do great with a massive amount of variety, while acetylcholine dominance usually corresponded with the need to spend longer progressing on an exercise. I’ve definitely noticed a rough correlation here: clients who score high on the Bravermann test for acetylcholine are often individuals who “over-think” and over analyze their performance set-to-set, often asking the most questions (sometimes in a counter productive way). They need to spend time to get to know the lift before really getting confident and sending it.
*Note: Neurotransmitter dominance can be determined by taking the Braverman Test/Assessment. This test, easily found online, is thought to offer an insight to your dominance or deficiencies in brain neurotransmitters.
This is why you see some powerlifters, in my mind, excel with with conjugate programs, while others wallow and make no/slow progress. It’s also why you see some lifters burn themselves out completely on programs that are too linear: they train hard and are looking for max progress all the time, eventually succumbing to over-use injuries and accommodation to the movements.
Like all things however, there are a lot of good questions to ask and determine what goes into optimal variety. One thing that I think deserves a mention is training age. The longer an individual has been training, the more likely I am to need variety to prevent plateaus. Similarly, the newer they are, the more likely I am to need to spend a little extra time on some movements as they get their fundamentals down.
I hope this serves as a good primer to understanding how nuanced the issue of variety is in your training. It’s not simply something that can be “meme’d” or made simple or cast aside one way or the other. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop them below. I reexamine and explore this topic constantly and plan to expand more on it, as its where training can be very creative, fun and productive.