In order to make the best possible gains, your training requires a certain amount of strategic variation. You can think of the variation principle as the need to (carefully and thoughtfully) alter certain training variables over time in order to keep novelty within the programming above a sufficient threshold. When properly implemented, this novelty can allow us to avoid stagnation and potentiate beneficial adaptations.
An important point to keep in mind is that the principles of specificity and overload are prerequisites for the principle of variation to be effective. In other words, your training must be structurally aimed in the right direction and progressively challenging for any of the superficial changes associated with the variation principle to have a tangibly positive effect.
Once the S&O bases have been covered, the next step in deciding whether or not you should change a given training variable is to look at different levels of programmatic time (i.e. single session vs microcycles vs mesocycles vs macrocycles). What we see is that most changes should be kept to a minimum over shorter time-frames, outside of those that are functions of strategic auto-regulation (which we will discount for now). But as we zoom out further and further, we will eventually get to a perspective where every aspect of the optimal program has completely turned over. In the short and intermediate term, specificity+overload necessitate consistency; in the long term, changes must be made to stay ahead of acclimatization. When the inevitable need for variation arises, there are several effective ways of going about it.
Exercise Variation:
This is one of the most debated questions in all of bodybuilding: how often should you change exercises? And the answer comes from understanding why changing exercises can be useful to begin with.
When you implement a new variation, you have to start from ground zero — the neural patterning must be etched, your muscles and joints must conform to the novel demands, you have to figure out what loads to use, and you have to learn how to strain through hard reps. All of this leads to increased muscular disruption (i.e. soreness) and longer recovery times. More importantly, the lack of comfortability, technical prowess and structural integrity means that risk of injury is much higher when introducing a new exercise. So sticking with movements for some duration of time seems like a good idea to circumvent these shortcomings, but there are also downsides to pushing that line of thinking too far. At a certain point, we get so proficient and adapted to a specific pattern that generating an overloading stimulus becomes unreasonable and impractical. The tissues we’re targeting have fortified themselves against the exercise after repeated bouts, which means more and more volume must be added while the load/rep progressions slow to a crawl. Eventually, the most efficient way to continue making progress is to vary the exercise and start the adaptation cycle over.
But not all exercises are created equal. A deadlift is vastly different from a biceps curl when it comes to how frequently you can strategically introduce novelty. For the former, a minimum of 4-6 weeks is probably needed for most trainees before they consider swapping variations. For the latter, you can probably undulate as often as every week without much downside. It comes down to weighing the inherent risk associated with the exercise with its magnitude of disruption. Through this lens, it’s easier to see why deadlifts (high risk/high disruption) need more accumulation time in a program compared to biceps curls (low risk/low disruption).
Another consideration is the severity of variation when swapping exercises. Returning to the above examples, going from a Barbell RDL to a DB RDL is not the same as Barbell RDL -> Deficit Barbell Stiff Leg Deadlift. The former only swaps modalities while the latter completely alters the ROM, pattern and target muscles. Intuitively, making less drastic changes dampens the novelty effect, which allows you to more seamlessly transition between movements without returning to ground zero. The effect of this can be huge when extrapolated to consider the total time/volume being dedicated towards productive work compared to that which is merely scaffolding for the future productive work. More efficient than a program that calls for Barbell RDL -> Deficit Barbell Stiff Leg Deadlift might be to throw in Barbell Stiff Leg Deadlifts as an intermediate step to smooth out the process.
Rep Range Variation:
Increasing or decreasing repetition ranges is another viable strategy to take advantage of variation. Altering the called-for programming from 5-10 reps to 10-15 reps (or vice versa) can place subtly different demands on the tissue to break out of a stagnation trap while keeping other variables the same to eliminate any learning curves that might otherwise be a barrier. Like we discussed earlier with the principle of specificity, the effective rep range for hypertrophy is quite vast, so taking advantage of variation to slide along that spectrum is probably a good idea. (Though, the same can be said here as with exercise selection: subtle changes are preferred to going from sets of 5 to sets of 20.)
Within this umbrella, I’ll also throw in variability in repetition cadence (i.e. tempo) as it’s a similar approach to altering the total time-under-tension for a given set. Slowing-down and/or speeding-up the concentric and/or eccentric — as well as pauses in the stretch and/or contraction — can stimulate the muscle in novel ways to avoid (or help break through) plateaus.
Intensity Variation:
The overload principle states that training must get harder over time. It’s trivially easy to track progressions in the form of weight on the bar or reps per set. But this also assumes that we’re training as hard as we can each time we’re in the gym, when in reality, this isn’t actually the best approach. Instead, utilizing a gradiated intensity progression across weeks (or even months) allows the difficulty of the program to move in lock-step with the adaptations that come with exercise and rep range variability. In other words, keep the training slightly “easier” as you’re getting used to novelty in the early weeks of a mesocycle and slowly drive the intensity closer to failure as you get more comfortable with the schemes and more adapted to the stimulus.
Pushing this concept slightly further, intensity techniques offer a unique approach to variation. Implementing things like myoreps, load drop-sets, and blood-flow restriction are all means of increasing the difficulty of training, but we can’t use them all the time (lest we violate the principle of fatigue management). So in accordance with our variability baseline of staged intensity progressions, we can also strategically toss in some of these techniques when we want to provide an extra kick to our training. (Though, it is prudent to understand how each technique is best used and their effects to properly integrate them into a well-built program.)
Before wrapping this up, it should be noted that changing a bunch of training variables at the same time is almost always a poor idea under normal circumstances. This will limit your ability to overload and increase injury risk. The goal should always be to keep training consistent for as long as possible (other than the changes that are mediated by the overload principle) and only resort to variation when psychological or physiological staleness kicks in.
Muscle growth isn’t driven by “confusing the muscle” despite what you see in the gym, social media or P90X commercials. As boring as it is, what actually works is becoming proficient through repetition and carefully titrated progress over a long period of time, only interjecting with variation when absolutely necessary.
Wrapping Up
Understanding these principles allows each of us to take back our autonomy from the mind-numbing, complexity soup that is unstructured programming. Knowledge floats all jacked and strong boats.
If you take nothing else away from this article, remember to start with the big boys — specificity and overload — and build outward from this foundation. Training must be specific such that it’s always in alignment with your short and long term goals, and it must be overloading in a way that forces your body to continuously adapt towards realizing those goals. Next comes ensuring that you’re always training within the bounds of your capabilities and using active strategies to promote recovery (fatigue management); tailoring the program to match your unique needs (individualization); and intelligently changing things periodically to circumvent plateaus (variation).
Only by internalizing and integrating each of these interconnected principles — specificity, overload, fatigue management, individualization, and variation —can we realize sustainable and efficient gains.
Variation-
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Variation Discussion- https://www.instagram.com/tv/CQ3j3ganTww/