Muscle Confusion

This is an interesting one and I hear it all the time when I chat to people about their training programmes. "The key is to keep your muscles guessing Justin. If you want to see great development in your body, you must confuse the muscle." I have thought about this one for a while now because my initial response would have been very different to what I will write today.

There are many things that sound good to say but that have no real bearing in real life. I'm walking on sunshine. There's gold in my veins. I confused my muscle. These are all terms that are used for effect. They work very well in conversation in exaggerating an effect or to bring a point creatively across but that's about where it ends.

Who would survive if they had gold in their veins? Who would manage to walk on sunshine? We use these words to give our conversations a great and interesting flavour but that's about it. When it comes to building muscle there's something that we need to understand. Muscle is tissue. Who of us has ever played a trick on our hands by holding up three fingers and telling our hands that we've got five up? I know that that sounds very dumb but I'm trying to illustrate a point here.

Muscle is inanimate. It does not have the capacity to think. Our minds do that for us. Our bodies respond to what our minds dictate. If our minds say that we need to preserve energy because we're not receiving meals frequently enough then our bodies slow down our metabolism to store energy. If our minds tell our bodies that there is an unusual amount of stress being placed on our bodies and that we need to grow bigger muscles to handle that stress then that is what our bodies do.

This whole idea of muscle confusion is a very creative way to promote varied training strategies over a period of time. An example of this would be a muscle building programme for one month and then perhaps a calisthenics programme for another month followed by a cardio programme for the last month. That could also be considered cross training where various methods are employed. The truth about this scenario is that it is not so much what is being done but the fact that a programme is consistently adhered to.

It is not the exercises as much as the consistency of doing the exercise regularly. If an overweight person walked around the block everyday for 30 days, there would be a definite change in weight. Not because of the exercise but because of the consistency of doing something physical. What is great about the training routines I teach is that they cover all of the bases and keep us doing exactly what is necessary to achieve a specific result without wasting time or inordinate amounts of money.

So just to bring everything to a close, you cannot confuse your muscles because they have no capacity to think therefore they cannot be confused. Muscles respond to stress or the lack thereof and whichever one is being given at the time will determine the physical state the person will find themselves in. Train hard and follow a good programme and you will build a body that will last you 80 or 90 years. Do as little as possible and cash in your chips early.

Train smart, train hard and be consistent. You will get out what you put in and more later on.