Why Use Exercise Variation
Before we talk about how often you should vary exercises in your program I’m going to explain why we vary exercises in the first place.
A large amount of the information in this beginning section is a summary of information from “Scientific Principles of Strength Training” coauthored by Dr Mike Israetel, Dr James Hoffman and Chad Wesley Smith.
It’s a great book that covers the main strength training principles delivered in a format that’s specific to powerlifting.
I’ll go through the main reasons pretty concisely so that you can get an overview of variation without having to buy a book if that isn’t currently an option for you.
The book defines variation as “The manipulation of training variables to prevent staleness and injury and to magnify the long-term adaptive response to training” (p243).
Staleness is also referred to as adaptive resistance. Adaptive resistance means that the more you try to get something to adapt in a particular way, the less it adapts and the slower progress in that direction is. It’s like stretching a rubber band, the more you stretch the more energy is required to further stretch it.
When we train we want to overload (subject to greater stress) over time to see improvements in performance. Using the exact same exercises all the time leads to adaptive resistance localised to the specific muscle fibres used in that exercise.
Essentially the more you do the same thing the less gains you get unless you use some sort of variation. This doesn’t even necessarily have to be exercise variation. You can vary weight and reps per set, volume, exercise order, rest periods and tempo among other things.
What Counts as Exercise Variation
For the purpose of exercise variation I consider changes in stance/grip width/position as a separate exercise (changes that aren’t very small such as moving your hands out by only 1cm each)
Even if different exercises use the same muscle groups to a similar extent, the force angles involved are different. Therefore different parts of muscles and connective tissue get stressed.
This is where the increased risk of injury comes in. Always training the exact same movement pattern with no variation allows microtears in connective tissue to be repeatedly aggravated in the same way.
If left unchecked eventually this starts to limit performance. This is usually first manifested through pain and movement deviation and can eventually lead to injuries (hopefully we don’t get to this stage).
Relearning movements can allow you to see technical cues in a new light. It can also make you aware of mistakes you made previously.
After 2 months away from a movement, most of if not all adaptive resistance has dissipated for any given movement. You can then start relearning the movement with a higher potential growth rate compared to when you had already been training it for 2-3 months continuously.
The different systems in the body such as muscles, the nervous system and connective tissue all recover at different rates. Each exercise has a unique effect on each of these systems.
For example pullups and chinups both use the lats to a similar extent. However they will fatigue different fibres in the lats and surrounding connective tissue at different levels.
I’ll describe a situation in which it may make sense to vary exercises.
Lets say someone is trying to do weighted pullups every 3 days. At the specific volume, intensity (% 1RM) and relative intensity (RPE) they’re using they’re never quite recovering. This manifests in a slow decrease in performance from week to week.
Swapping weighted chinups for weighted pullups on one of these days would help to remedy this issue.
They both use slightly different muscle fibres to varying extents. Instead of always hammering the same ones, some of the fibres associated more with one variation can recover while doing the other (as they’re not being used as much) and vice versa. Due to this, variation allows you to get more training in for specific muscle groups as a whole.
Changes in any other factors such as volume and RPE could also improve recovery.
How Often Should You Use Exercise Variation
As a quick note before I start this section I want to state that exercise variation is NOT technically mandatory for strength development. However I do think that you would be limiting your results by not using it to at least some extent.
On a related note you could get very strong ONLY using sets of 5 reps. You’d still be limiting your progress by not using other rep ranges. Other rep ranges give you more tools to work with. Whatever results you get using just sets of 5 would be surpassed by using other rep ranges correctly.
When you vary exercises too often such as every microcycle (i.e. switch exercises every training week) you never actually allow your body to learn the movement pattern to any decent extent.
Whenever you do that movement you’re just stuck in that awkward beginning phase where you’re trying to learn how to move your body with the equipment efficiently.
I’m not saying that you can’t build any muscle/strength doing this but it’s not the most effective way to go about it as you’re never properly adapting to the movement. You don’t get proficient enough at it, so you’re not using your muscles to their full capacity. This limits how much you can overload and how much progress you can make.
When you don’t vary exercises often enough (say waiting an entire year before swapping out an exercise) adaptive resistance has kicked in significantly and progress is slower than it could be. Injury risk is higher as well (both are explained above).
Novice lifters are an exception to this. There’s no concrete definition of a novice lifter but generally someone who can progress every main compound in almost every session that they train is still considered to be a novice (assuming all other recovery factors are in place).
They’re kind of not an exception anyway. Withg recovery is on point a lifter shouldn’t remain a novice for much more than 6 months or so. This isn’t much longer than the 1-4 month time period I give below.
A novice shouldn’t really be worried about overuse injuries either due to the fact that they’re handling such low absolute weights and volumes. They also don’t really have to worry about adaptive resistance as the novice phase is defined by very fast progression which itself indicates a lack of adaptive resistance. Novices grow from pretty much anything. They benefit more from ingraining good technique on all their main compound lifts rather than worrying about changing up their stance/grip width/position for the most part.
The vast majority of the time I vary exercises every 1-4 months.
At the moment my training mesocycles including the deload are pretty much exactly a month long. Most of the people I program for also have training mesos 4-5 weeks long so 1-4 months roughly corresponds to 1-4 training mesos. I usually don’t vary exercises mid meso. However if you get injured or can see one coming it’s better to vary earlier if necessary.
Most of the time I keep each variation in for 2-3 months. I rarely switch main compouds out after just 1 month/mesocycle.
At one point Weighted chinups were a lift that I trained every 3 days at moderate/high volumes and they’re also one of my best lifts. They can be stressful on the wrists/ elbows when done on a straight bar. I’m relatively advanced at these and occasionally I may vary my grip width after 1 month/meso but I usually keep the same variation in for at least 2.
Other lifts such as barbell back extensions that I’m not as relatively strong at, only train once a week or so and train with less volume I may leave in for 4 months/mesocycles.
I rarely rotate exercises any more/less often than this time period and the sweet spot tends to be rotating most compound exercises every 2-3 months/mesos.
Less complex, easier movements such as arm and delt isolation exercises (suitable for myo reps) are rarely kept in for more than 2 blocks. Often when they’re trained 2+ times a week they’re switched out after 1.
When I feel like I still have room for technical improvement (usually if it’s a new lift or I haven’t trained it in a long time i.e. 6+ months) I may stretch it out a bit longer.
There are many factors which determine how often I vary exercises. There’s a range in the middle where you haven’t disrupted momentum by rotating too early and haven’t suffered the negatives of waiting too long.
Factors That Affect How Often You Vary Exercises
Injuries/aches and pains
Sometimes you can “sense” that an injury isn’t too far off, even though you’re doing your best to keep good form your joints/tendons are starting to hurt on occasion. Maybe it’s gotten to the point where you’re not actually injured but can feel enough pain to limit your performance in training. At this point it’s probably wise to swap this exercise for another similar one that doesn’t cause pain no later than the end of the current training mesocycle.
If it’s bad enough you may need to swap it out immediately to stop injury risk from climbing too high.
If it does lead to an injury, in addition to being unable to train that exercise it’ll also lead to not being able to train other exercises that use the same muscle groups/connective tissue. This can severely limit your training until it heals.
Movement Pattern Differences
There are 2 main levels of exercise variation, close variants and variants that just use similar muscle groups. Close variants are those which have only one change from the previous exercise, in some cases maybe 2 smaller changes.
For example switching from a touch and go barbell bench press to a close grip or even close grip paused bench press is a close variant. The movement pattern is quite similar with a change in grip width and a slight change in tempo.
High handle trap bar deadlifts and conventional deadlifts from the floor use the same muscle groups. They don’t have much carryover due to the fact that the movement patterns aren’t close enough. Stance width, grip width and position, centre of mass of the weight in respect to the body and the range of motion that the torso and lower body goes through are all different.
In some cases there would be a high degree of carryover due to variants strengthening weak muscle groups, but the movements patterns themselves don’t have a high degree of carryover to each other.
When movements are more similar they can be swapped around more frequently as the new movement isn’t as far from what you’ve already been doing. There is less for your body to “learn” before it gets proficient at the movement pattern. Because it’s more similar adaptive resistance will buildup quicker as well.
Strength levels
Even though strength levels don’t directly correlate with how advanced you are they’re usually a pretty good proxy. Stronger individuals are usually more technically proficient and have been training the exercise longer. Due to this fact they tend to adapt quicker. They use heavier loads and have a higher risk of injury. They’d benefit from varying exercises more often.
Complexity of Movement
Less complex exercises such as single join isolation movements (like bicep curls) can be rotated more frequently. There is very little technique and when you change variations you aren’t spending much time learning the technique of the new variation.
When progression starts to noticeably slow down – This one can be a bit harder to detect. If progression on other lifts is still good (indicating it’s probably specific to a certain lift and not general programming issues) there may be enough of a buildup of adaptive resistance at this point that it would be wise to vary that specific exercise.
Ideally you’d want to vary just before the point at which this happens, so that you’re not spending training time unproductively. You can get decent predictions of when this might happen based on past training history.
Synergy with the rest of your program
Exercise variation may be a good idea when altering other programming variables. Maybe you’re doing both RDL and stiff leg deadlifts, one on each of your lower body days. These exercises are similar and they are both pretty fatiguing.
Hamstrings are used heavily in both hip extension and knee flexion, but both of these exercises are primarily hip extension focused. Switching one of them out for a knee flexion exercise such as leg curls can be useful in lowering overall and specifically lower back fatigue. This still allows you to train the hamstrings hard and cover both of its functions.
It also makes sense to consider what other exercises and rep ranges you uses on each of these days. I’d recommend putting leg curls on on a higher rep day instead of on a heavier day where you focus on lower rep ranges.
Frequency
The more often you practice an exercise variation the quicker you adapt. I wouldn’t usually recommend only incorporating a more complex lift like a back squat for a month.
However If you’re doing a very high frequency squatting protocol that has you squatting 5+ times a week it may be suitable to vary after a single month/training block . You’ve had many more opportunities to practice and get proficient at the lift.
You could even just significantly decrease the frequency and volume while you focus more on other variations if you don’t necessarily want to completely remove it. Making sure just to do enough to keep the technique there.
To close exercise variations don’t have to be massively different. Changes can be as simple as just changing grip/stance width or adding a pause.
I hope this article has made you consider how often and to what extent you vary your exercises so you can make better progress in your training.
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