training plan – Beary Strong

About Exercise Variety

Why exercise variation isn’t always optimal.

During our long flight from Vienna to Tokyo I’ve got a bunch of downloadable magazines for free. Of course I’ve taken some of the fitness related ones even if they are often full of bro-science, but they are a good inspiration for writing blog posts though. One of them was looking really nice: it had a really strong looking woman on the cover, instead of just one of the pretty & skinny girls. I started reading the training and coaching philosophy of this apparently “evidence-based” lady and my jaw dropped as the words “muscle confusion” (=constantly changing the exercises in your training plan) as driver for muscle growth were used. Well -spoiler alert- the opposite of muscle confusion is rather a driver for hypertrophy. Let’s see why and where variation may or may not make sense.

Your Training Plan – The Bare Bones

A minimalistic approach to training.

First of all, I hope you have at least some kind of training plan. If you go to the gym to just get onto some machines you like or that are unoccupied at the moment, that would not be training, that’s just “working out” and as efficient as eating soup with a fork. You need a plan that leads you to your goals and that plan doesn’t have to be fancy! So let’s take a closer look of what every good training plan should include.