How To Use Muscle Confusion

-

 The Truth About Muscle Confusion

 Muscle confusion in an exercise context is a controversial subject, replete with marketing hype.  I have my own ideas of how muscle confusion can be helpful to you if you think of it correctly.  While it is true that muscle confusion alone might not make your muscles bigger, it might help most by giving you variety and interest in your workouts. Variety is one of my favorite forms of external motivation.  You can use it to improve your mojo.  You may even get some conversion of it to internal motivation.  If you are doing the same thing over and over again, it can get boring. This saps motivation. Use variety to help you stay interested.

Research shows that your muscles will only get bigger from progressive stress.  So can muscle confusion help?  Muscle confusion, I admit, is oversold.  But it can make workouts more interesting and less boring as well as work different fibers and/or aspects of each muscle.


 Workout Approaches -  Worst To Best
  • Stop workouts due to boredom
  • Do the same workout over and over
  • Do the same exercise but use progression to increase stress
  • Use variety (sometimes called muscle confusion) and progression

 The worst thing you can do is give up and stop working out.  The most common reason for failure of any routine is stopping it too early.  Sometimes a lack of variety can lead you in this direction.  Use any motivator you can to make workouts more attractive.  The next worst thing  you can do is to do the same workout all the time without progressing your weight or reps.  You will not get bigger muscles and your workouts will become boring.  I have often said that the best workout is the one you are motivated to keep doing.  It can't help you if you give it up.

Next is doing the same thing but increasing the stress by gradually adding weight or reps.    This is the best way, indeed some say the only way, to add muscle size for a given muscle fiber or aspect.  Lastly is the method of using variety in combination with adding stress.  For an example of some good workouts for the biceps, see here.  With this approach, you can build size and strength in multiple fibers, helping to prevent injuries, and combat boredom in your workouts.

For another example, consider the quad muscles and squats. Squats are often prescribed as an exercise for the quads.   However, there are really four quad muscles.  Regular squats work primarily the central portion of the quads.  Doing squats with your toes pointed inward, you will work the inner muscle of the four quad muscles, the vastus medialis.  If you point the toes outward while squatting, you will work the vastus lateralis.  Any compound exercise like a squat will work a lot of muscles, but to varying degrees for various muscles.  See here for a really good description. of the squat in particular.  So if your goal is to build size with width, varying the angle of the foot is a good idea.

To summarize, the “best option” is the one that you like enough to keep doing, long term. It isn’t what you do, or what you want to achieve as much as it is your commitment and persistence. That’s why you should enjoy what you do.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

-
Image
  Mojo Heroes And Antiheroes There are both heroes and antiheroes among people with high mojo. There is no law that says a person with high mojo has to be a nice person. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. Let’s define anti-hero. Webster says an anti-hero is “a protagonist or notable figure who is conspicuously lacking in heroic qualities”. Examples of heroic qualities are strength, ability, achievement, courage, and nobility. The number of anti-heroes compared to heroes is greater in fiction than in real life. It is just more fun to write about or play the more complex characters typified by anti-heroes. It exploits the talents of the actors better. It also seems as if there are more anti-heroes today than in prior years. But all of the people I am about to mention had high mojo, whether hero or anti-hero. In an earlier post , I described the top 10 American people with high mojo. They were George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan, Benjamin F
Read more

10 Highest Mojo Colleges

-
Image
10 Highest Mojo Colleges Many sources make lists. Wikipedia is a source that does a good job of describing how a list is built. But I don't rely on it. Instead, I used endowment , acceptance rate , the US News rank , and my own judgement as my sources in making my list. sually, lists rank colleges for suitability for an individual or for best overall rank. However, mine ranks the colleges with the highest mojo, not the best academics, sports, campuses, etc. I included US News’ overall rank because a high placement on such a list is one indication (not the only one) of mojo. Another one that I use is endowment. If alumni have money ad want to give it to their alma mater, that indicates that the alma mater has mojo. Another indicator that I use is acceptance rate. If a lot more people apply to a college than are accepted, that is a further indication of mojo. Also note that the military academies are in a different group for purposes of evaluation, but I include a co
Read more

How Mojo Works

-
Image
Figure 1. The components of mojo. What makes up mojo? Merriam Webster says: Mojo is :” a magic spell, hex, or charm, broadly : magical power // works his mojo on the tennis court //The team has lost its mojo.“ I’m not sure about the magic part of it, but mojo is something that a person or group has to varying degrees. You know it when you see it, even if you can’t define it. Another example of such a thing was cited by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who famously said in his 1964 Order , he could not use words to describe pornography but " I know it when I see it ." When something is not well understood, it is indistinguishable from magic . Maybe this is why people are often said to have their “mojo workin’” even if magic is irrelevant. Parts of Mojo motivation expertise experience support luck faith willingness to act. This blog will focus on motivation because it is such a big part of mojo and is often a poorly under
Read more