how often should you change your workout routine?

You have probably heard a LOT of advice about this topic.  Some trainers say you should change things up every day for "maximum muscle confusion"!!!!  Some trainers say every month while some say only every 3 months...  What is really the most effective way to train?
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According to the National Academy of Sports Medicine (who I am certified by as personal trainer):

IT IS BEST TO CHANGE YOUR ROUTINE EVERY 6-8 WEEKS.

Why not all the other options above?  We will get there, but first let's define what a "routine" is.  For the sake of this article, let's define a routine as:

"groupings of exercises that are organized to work your ENTIRE body once all the groupings are completed."  (Need to clarify other workout definitions?  Click here!)

This means that routines can span 1 day (full body), 2 days (upper/lower, etc), 3 days (legs/upper/core, etc).  Once you finish all the groupings and have worked your entire body, the "routine" is then repeated.  So, how often do we repeat?  

why not every day?

Yes, I know, hearing anything that talks about "muscle confusion" seems like a great idea and the best way to get your body to respond.  But is there such a thing as too much muscle confusion?  YES.  Think about it this way: if you performed all new exercises EVERY SINGLE DAY, wouldn't you get frustrated when each exercise felt like a new skill to master?  Wouldn't you like to go to the gym knowing that you have good form on at least some of the exercises in your routine?  I know I do...  AND, let's take a second to talk about soreness.  You know how sore you get after doing a new exercise for the first time?  Do you REALLY want to be that immobile every day of your life?  NOPE.

So if we aren't going to change things up every day, how do we know when to change things?  It's a fine line here, because you want to change things the least amount of times you can WHILE STILL challenging your body.  So:

why not every 3 months?

Every 3 months seems like it would be a good idea, because you would give your body plenty of time to master a movement, but honestly, your body is WAY smarter than that.  3 months is a long time to do the same thing over and over and I promise that your body will get bored and plateau!  No one wants a plateau.

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why not every month?

Yes, your body IS amazingly capable of adapting, but one month doesn't give it that much time to master something.  Think about it, if you perform a two day split routine for 4 weeks, you are only performing each exercise 4 times before you move on to new exercises.  It sure takes me longer than 4 tries to learn something new!

the "perfect" number:

This leaves us with the middle ground...  somewhere between 4 weeks and 12 weeks.  Let's continue with our example from above: if you perform that two day split for 6-8 weeks, you get 6-8 days to master each exercise!  That's plenty of time to progress. 

What about getting bored?  The longer you perform a workout, the more likely you will get bored.  One way to eliminate that is by performing the same exercises in different ways throughout your routine.  This is the exact reason I designed my workout cycles to progress like this.  Each of your 6 weeks contains the same exercises, but each week has a slightly different goal.  If that kind of layout sounds appealing to you, take a second to look more in depth look at how my plans are organized here!

Alright, you are now READY to tackle your workout routine with CONFIDENCE.  Go forth and LIFT YOUR LIFE!

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