Program Hopping

I love working out. This actually creates a problem. It means that I love tinkering with whatever program I happen to be doing. If I’m doing leg curls for 5x10 three times per week, I’ll think “What if I changed to 4x8, 3x12 with a drop set of 20. If I do all of that 3 times per week, my hamstrings will grow faster.” And to be fair, they probably would. But then I would come with a new program that would have me doing leg curls 6 days a week. Invariably I will circle back around to my original 5x10 workout. And I really never make progress, because I’m constantly hopping to a new program.

     Program hopping is so pervasive that rationalizations for it have become a normal part of gym lingo. When someone says, “I change my program every workout to keep the muscles confused”, you know exactly what they are trying to say. One of these days, I’m going to respond with, “I didn’t know you could confuse a muscle. If muscles can be confused, does that mean they can also understand?” It’s ridiculous! Muscles don’t need to be confused. They need to be overloaded.

     I’ve been working out for since 2000. I won’t pretend that I’m some sort of super awesome super lifter. I’m just a guy. I’ve made plenty of mistakes and I’ve worked out with some real beasts. Even though I was never a great lifter or even good one, I did make more progress than most people in the gym scene, despite following a crappy program. The reason that I did better than most is that I stuck to my program and I put out a respectable effort.(This was before I became a program hopper.)

     I’m convinced that program hopping and a lack of effort are the two biggest reasons for failure in the gym. Lack of effort is the #1 reason, but it mostly afflicts those who aren’t dedicated. Most gym rats put out plenty of effort. I may be biased because I try to avoid most commercial gyms and stick to gyms that could be called “hardcore”. But most people I see work hard enough, but change programs seemingly every two weeks.

     I think this all started with steroid users. Prior to the rise of steroids, people trained the whole body 3 times per week. Programs were only changed when you cease making progress. This isn’t perfect, but your average gym goer did better under this protocol than your average gym goer does today.

     With the rise of steroids, trainers could make progress with programs that would never work for their drug free counter parts. With the help of a little blue pill, you could now make progress without busting your butt multiple times per week on programs centered around heavy leg and back work. Unfortunately drug users were less than forthcoming about the reasons for their success. They attributed their success to their new programs. And it didn’t take long before “muscle confusion” became part of gym lingo.

     Don’t get me wrong, programs stop working at some point and variables have to be changed to spur further response. But don’t take this to the level of absurdity, as some bodybuilders have, and think that you have to constantly vary your workouts to make results. Because of the sheer number of people involved in this activity, there is undoubtedly some drug free lifters who has built a fantastic physique or become freakishly strong with a constantly varied workouts…but most haven’t.

     For the average lifter, the best thing you can do is get strong on the big movements. When I was an Olympic lifter, I only weighed 85kg (187 lbs.) but had quads that would make your average gym rat cry himself to sleep. Wanna know how I built them? Snatching, C&J’ing & squatting to a near max 6 days a week almost all year.

     Any decent program will work. Like I said, I did better than most and my program sucked. I tried to base it on the Bulgarian OL routine, but I didn’t understand their program as well as I thought I did.  So, you see, even a crappy program can work if you stick with it over the long haul and if you work hard.

     Catch you next time, gentlemen.