Basics: More Weight is the Easiest Way to "Change it Up"

How do you make your workouts more productive?

You'll hear about things "Muscle Confusion" and "changing it up" as ways to get your body to grow.

This is true, to an extent. The body responds to new stimuli by adapting to it, and then adapting to grow stronger than what is minimally necessary to respond again in the future.

So yes, you can swap out exercises, change up your workout day after day, and progress.

But there is an easier way to do it.

Keep the exercises the same, keep the reps and sets the same. Just add more weight - even the minimum possible jump - and do them again.

This is a change. A deadlift for 5 reps at 135 pounds being "changed up" to 5 reps at 140 pounds is enough of a new stimulus to get your body to respond.

Don't worry about changing things, just make them harder for as long as you are able to keep getting the reps.

This is not to say there is no value in changing the exercises workout to workout. A rotation of workouts might do this - Monday is Workout A, which includes the Barbell Bench Press and Pullup, and Thursday is Workout B, which includes Pushups and Dumbbell Rows. But next Monday you could come back to Workout A and simply try to add more weight to the bar for the same sets and reps to progress.

Remember a change in stimuli is a change in stimuli - you don't need to keep swapping around workouts, rep ranges, sets, and exercises to progress. For someone just trying to get in shape, adding weight to the bar, plates to the cable weight stack, and using bigger and bigger dumbells and kettlebells is the way to go.

Personal Trainers: Answering "What now?"

What to do in the gym?

A personal trainer can tell you what to do in the gym. But so can any of hundreds of websites, and dozens of good training programs you can find on the web.

Part of the real value in a personal trainer is that your trainer can answer two important questions - "What next?" and "What now?"

"What next? - All programs, good or bad, will eventually stop working for you. Either you will progress past the limits of the program, or past the limits of linear progression (adding weight to the bar each workout).

When your gains run out, or the program proves to just not be working for your specific goals, a good trainer can answer, "What do I do next?"

"What Now?" - Even more important, how do you adjust your workout when life intervenes? An injury, illness, fatigue, stress - many things can derail your workout. If your workout plan says "bench press" and you've injured your shoulder, now what? A good trainer can answer that, on the fly, during a workout.

This is the most important part of the personal trainer's job - having the knowledge and experience to change your workout in reaction to changing needs, changing goals, and changing circumstances.

How can I do this myself?

Ask yourself, what if? What if I get hurt? What if this stops working? What if I need to substitute out because of missing or broken equipment? What can I do to keep getting a training effect? Know yourself, and learn what you can about training so you can make your own decisions.

Sleep and Weight Gain

There is an interesting blog post at the New York Times about lack of sleep and weight gain.

Lost Sleep Can Lead to Weight Gain

This isn't terribly surprising, as you naturally eat less when you spend more time sleeping, and your body recovers better from stress when you get sufficient sleep. Insufficient sleep = insufficient recovery from stress = more release of cortisol (a stress hormone) into your body. This causes more retention of body fat.

The short take away is that sleep is important and you need to get enough of it. This article and the study it looks at just points more towards the value of sleep.

Mindful Training

How closely are you paying attention to your lifting?

A common target for humor in the gym are the "cardio bunnies" - people doing cardio while watching TV, reading a book, flipping through a magazine, or listening to music. It seems like mindless cardio - not too hard, not too easy, and the movement of their own body is the last thing on the person's mind.


Try mindful training. If possible, shut down all distractions. Music, TVs, phones, and distractions. Put everything away except the weights you need to train with. If not possible (such as in a public gym), put on some background music that drowns out outside noises but doesn't require any attention. Or just focus yourself.

Pay attention to every rep, every step of your run, every move of your arms, legs, and body. Put your mind into each lift and each movement, and try to feel what is working. Feel the muscles, feel the impact, and feel the weight.

It sounds kind of new age-y and froo-froo, but it's not. Focus, and try to connect your mind to what you are doing.

You might find you get more out of the workout, and you can increase your intensity* without increasing your weight, reps, sets, or distance. Try to get the most value out of what you are doing by paying close attention to it. There are 168 hours in a week, and you are spending at most 4-5 hours a week training - so make sure that's all you do in those hours, at least for a few workouts.

Being wholly in the exercise can give you better results.



* Here I mean percentage of maximum possible effort, not percentage of 1-rep maximum.

Quick Tip: Demonstrating Strength vs. Strength Training

Quick Tip:

When you are lifting your friend's fridge, shoveling snow, picking up a heavy water cooler bottle, etc. - you don't care how much training effect you are getting. When you pull a one-rep max at a powerlifting meet or weightlifting meet, you aren't worried about how much stronger this one lift will get you. The goal is to move the object, make the lift, and do so safely and effectively. This is demonstrating strength.

In the gym, the goal isn't to lift the weight per se. The goal is to get stronger, so that when you demonstrate your strength it's there for you. It doesn't matter how heavy or light you go in the gym if you can't go heavy when you need to outside the gym. This is strength training.

Outside of the gym - maximize what you can do safely and effectively. Inside the gym - get the most out of your training, don't try to put the most in.

Review: Egoscue: Pain Free Workout Series (DVDs)

Egoscue: Pain Free Workout Series Vol. 1 and 2

2 DVD Set (Beginner, Advanced)

This two-DVD set is billed as a workout you can do to end chronic pain and/or get fit. The first DVD is the beginner's workout, the second is the advanced workout.

Each DVD stars with an assessment/functional test. Basically, a test of where you distribute your weight between your (bare) feet while standing, and a flexibility test - can you fold over at the waist and touch your palms to the floor with straight legs. The recommendation is to do this before and after the workout. It does give you a good idea of how the workouts affect your posture - weight distribution can significantly even out and your flexibility will be better post-workout. Continued checking will tell you if you improve overall - will your weight distribution start to be better at the beginning than where it was when you started? This is how you check.

The workouts are basically a mix of mobility drills, a few bodyweight exercises (crunch variations, pushups) and static poses (both flexibility - like downward dog - and strength, like a free standing squat hold). In a lot of ways it resembles yoga more than a bodyweight strength training routine. If you are familiar with the Pain Free book series, much of these exercises will look familiar.

The DVDs emphasize that health is cumulative, so you're just supposed to let the cumulative work of doing the exercises total up and improve your mobility and health. The workouts follow a method that seems aimed at first dis-associating your joints from each other and then re-integrating them. So first you get your shoulders and hips to work properly separately, then you put them back together.

The basic workout takes about 45 minutes, including explanations. There is an option to watch it workout-only, but instead of explanations and timing the movements for you, it's just music. So it saves no time, and loses valuable explanation. A track with quick cues, rep counts, and timing - just like in the advanced workout - would have been very useful.

The advanced workout takes about 45 minutes, as well, although there are significantly more exercises that you go through. This is good and bad - it's not any longer, but sometimes it's not clear what exactly you are doing and why. Since new exercises are swapped in for old ones, you lose out on some understanding of how to properly execute them. What isn't clear is why some exercises from the basic workout aren't in the advanced workout. Do you no longer need "frog" or the ankle circles any longer? If not, why not - what exercise has taken its place?

Like most exercise DVDs and books, there isn't much theory there to let you know "if X hurts, do Y" or "A has been replaced by B, that's why you don't need to do A any more." This may not be the aim, but again, it limits its utility to either "this works for me" or "this doesn't work for me" with no in between. It is also not clear if certain exercises should be dropped - if I do X and my lower back hurts, am I incorrectly executing it or should I skip it until I've dealt with that pain through other methods?

Content: 4 out of 5. The exercises are good and it feels complete. However, direct guidelines on "how often?" and when to progress to the next level would greatly improve its utility.
Presentation: 4 out of 5. If any DVD ever needed multiple angles, it's this one, and it doesn't have it. A separate exercise-only track would have helped, too.

Overall: As a workout, this isn't a bad start. It's especially useful for folks with injuries or chronic pain or chronic weakness, since it starts out slowly and emphasizes movement quality over movement volume or speed. However, it is hampered by its lack of guidance on progression and frequency. As a mobility drill/off-day workout/flexibility routine, it is also good. Whether it will cure chronic pain or not is unclear. For its price, and with those caveats in mind, it's a good DVD set.

Steroids vs. Natural post

So how much difference does adding 600 mg of testosterone, under a doctor's supervision, make to a trainee?

Over at A Workout Routine, there is a look at a study that compared no exercise vs. exercise, steroids + no exercise and steroids + exercise.

Steroids vs Natural: The Muscle Building Effects Of Steroid Use

Long story short: even with no exercise, additional testosterone can add muscle. With it, it no comparison with natural trainees.

This harkens back to the advice I started out with, by Stuart McRobert, who repeatedly made the point that non-steroid using trainees were ill-served by the advice of steroid-using routines. This article and the review it cites make a similar case. It's long but interesting.

Very Short Version: If you aren't taking steroids, get your training advice from someone who isn't, or trains people successfully who don't.