Avoid Plateaus (and Boredom) by Varying Your Workouts
If you do the same exercises day after day, it can hinder your results, lead to a plateau, and make working out pretty boring. Get-Fit Guy has the solution. Here’s how to vary your activity so that your body stays fit and healthy (and you have some fun in the process).
Brock Armstrong
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Avoid Plateaus (and Boredom) by Varying Your Workouts
If you have been a reader (or listener) of the Get-Fit Guy show for a while, you will know that I believe exercise shouldn’t be like medicine that you choke down in order to stay healthy. It should lead to good health, yes, but it should also be enjoyable. With all the hundreds (maybe thousands) of activities available to us, you don’t have to force your fitness. For example, if you absolutely hate running, there is absolutely no reason for you to take it up. Try cycling, gardening, LARPing, lawn bowling, planking, hiking, swimming, orienteering, salsa dancing, or all of the above.
Long term fans of Get-Fit Guy will also know that a mixed and varied movement program is the best way to become mobile and to stay mobile for years to come. Choosing one pattern of movement (or none) to practice the majority of the time will leave you with mobility deficiencies, overuse patterns, and unexpressed genes.
The other day, a listener named Michelle called the Get-Fit Guy Voicemail and asked: “Is it really that important to change my workouts or can I mostly do the same things that I enjoy all the time?”
Well, Michelle, as much as I applaud the fact that you are doing something that you enjoy, I do have some advice to share with you.
The Law of Specificity
Let’s face it, most of us are not professional athletes. I for one have finally stopped waiting for the NHL to call and invite me to play defence for the Winnipeg Jets. But despite the fact that we are not pros, many of us tend to train as if it’s our job, focusing all of our workouts on our chosen sport and ignoring all other forms of exercise or athletic endeavour. We behave as if we are one breakthrough spin class away from heading to the Olympics.
If you are a professional athlete, you do need single-minded focus on getting better at your one chosen sport. This is called the law of specificity or the principle of specificity. This principle states that your training should be relevant and specific to the sport for which you are training. Or, put another way, that you should perform the actual skill—and only that skill—so you can get better at it. Like that old joke about the best way to get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice.
It’s true that training this way is essential to excel at that one sport. But it is also unhealthy. If you focus only on drills and skills specific to your sport, you will end up unbalanced and this will inhibit your general athletic ability and performance in the long run.
Most professional athletes know their careers will be short and they work hard to make that pay off. But because their livelihood depends on being very good at their chosen sport, they are willing to take the biological hit that comes along with training with that type of specificity.
The beauty of me not having received my NHL call is that I don’t have to limit myself to only training for hockey. I have the luxury of choosing a more well-rounded fitness program. And the more I branch out and adopt a wider approach to my fitness, as opposed to practicing like a specialist, the better and better I begin to move through this world.
Varying Your Movement
Dynamic movement is a term that has been used to describe the opposite of the principle of specificity. It is the idea that each day we should focus our training, exercise, and general movement on a different aspect of fitness.
You may have heard me (or biomechanist Katy Bowman) talk about shunning the sitting and standing desk for what we call a “dynamic workstation.” The idea being that simply swapping one static position (sitting) for another (standing still) isn’t solving the static issue. Varying our position is the name of the game, whether it’s the location of your computer or what workout you’re doing.
The primary goal of training specificity is to condition the specific muscles that will be used in a specific activity and over time, develop more and more efficiency in those specific actions. But the primary goal of varying your movement is the opposite—to constantly challenge ourselves to broaden our movement horizons. Think of it as becoming less and less efficient—but in a good way.
When we consistently vary our movement, our brains don’t have time to develop any associations with the movement. You can think of it like having a slightly clean slate each time we do new things. You know what to do, how to approach it, and how to execute it, but you haven’t done it so much that the movement has become super efficient, repetitious, and perhaps boring.
Plateaus
Plateaus occur in our fitness because of the phenomenon known as homeostasis. An endocrinologist named Hans Selye first discovered this and from his research, the theory known as the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) was born. This theory shows us exactly how the body responds to stress through the three phases called Alarm Reaction, Resistance, and Exhaustion.
GAS Phase One is known as the Alarm Reaction. This is when your body reacts to a change in stress or, in our case, a new workout. Since you have never done this workout before, you respond to it well and see fitness gains quickly.
GAS Phase Two is known as the stage of Resistance. This is when the body begins to adapt to the stress of the new workout. This happens slowly over time, depending on the level of stress, the amount of recovery, and the general wellness of the individual.
GAS Phase Three is the stage of Exhaustion. This is when the body is no longer able to resist the stress of this repetitive workout and this is usually when overtraining starts to occur. You can avoid the overtraining by taking some recovery time but this often isn’t enough to shake off the impending plateau.
To truly break that plateau, a new stressor needs to be introduced (back to phase one) so the body can react and restart the gains.
A Varied Approach
So, what would a varied workout program look like? Well, here is an example of a nicely varied ten-day fitness plan:
Day One: Easy aerobic workout
Day Two: Lower body strength session (never skip Leg Day)
Day Three: Yoga, Pilates, and foam rolling
Day Four: Upper body strength session
Day Five: Sprint or HIIT session
Day Six: Recovery day
Day Seven: Long walk or hike
Day Eight: Play a sport with friends
Day Nine: Specific mobility session (turning your fitness weaknesses into fitness strengths)
Day Ten: Free day or athletes’ choice
Day Always: Living an active lifestyle, moving more of your body more often, and not spending too much time being sedentary.
Obviously, this is just an example chosen for a fictional athlete who enjoys those activities. For someone else, there may be spin classes, barre classes, or CrossFit in there. For someone training for a marathon, I would add in at least one more quality run per week. For someone wanting to gain upper body strength, there would be more lifting sessions included. You get the idea.
Mix up your workouts, stay active the remainder of your day, and you will reap the benefits for many years to come. A varied fitness plan will also help you avoid getting bored, injured, or reaching the dreaded plateau.
For more varied info, dynamic tips, and to join the plateauing conversation, head over to Facebook.com/GetFitGuy, twitter.com/getfitguy or BrockArmstrong.com.
Also don’t forget to subscribe to the Get-Fit Guy podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play or via RSSopens XML file .
Exercise drawing image courtesy of Shutterstock.
About the Author
Brock Armstrong was the host of the Get-Fit Guy podcast between 2017 and 2021. He is a certified AFLCA Group Fitness Leader with a designation in Portable Equipment, NCCP and CAC Triathlon Coach, and a TnT certified run coach. He is also on the board of advisors for the Primal Health Coach Institute and a guest faculty member of the Human Potential Institute.