When I first learned about weightlifting in the 1990s, most of what I did was based on two sources – my high school weights teacher, and my father. My high school weights teacher was also my high school’s football coach and he was a total product of the 1960s and 1970s approach to lifting weights. Looking back, everything he taught us back then involved old school weightlifting strategies that were geared toward making people stronger athletes, especially football players.
We did a lot of bench pressing, upright rows, shoulder presses, squats, and power cleans. Once we did all of those lifts, split into two upper body days and two lower body days a week, we could then do whatever ancillary lifts we wanted to until the class period ended. The focus was on building strength first in my high school weights classes, and building muscles second.
Conversely, my dad was an amateur bodybuilder who competed against other amateur bodybuilders. His focus was on building muscle mass that was aesthetically pleasing. He taught me about the importance of specificity in training, dedicating one day a week to certain muscle groups and then allowing that muscle group ample time to recover to ensure the most muscle growth possible. Whereas my high school weights teacher had us do the same lifts every week with no real variation, my dad encouraged me to mix it up from time to time to some extent, as that was what elite bodybuilders did (and still do).
If you follow elite bodybuilders on social media, then you will see them discuss this. Certain lifts are always done on their dedicated day(s) of the week, which 4-time Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler calls the ‘meat and potatoes’ lifts, like squats on legs day. Then there are other ancillary-type lifts that you can mix up from time to time for various reasons.
“Advanced training requires that you change your exercise program every three to six months, dropping certain exercises in favor of others.” states Arnold Schwarzenegger in his amazing book Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding (page 210).
“This is necessary in order to: (1) provide the variety of movements to develop every area of every single muscle and muscle group; (2) force the body to do new and unexpected movements to help shock it into further growth; and (3) help keep you from getting bored.” Arnold stated.
At the basic level, if you keep doing the same lifts but keep adding more resistance over time via additional weight and/or additional reps, your muscles should grow. At first, this is not hard because you can incrementally increase the amount you are lifting. However, at some point, it is going to get harder to keep increasing the weight without plateauing because your muscles will not keep growing indefinitely. At some point, they will hit a ceiling so to speak. From that perspective, changing your lifting routine as Arnold describes is very important over the long haul.
With all of that being said, too much variance is not good either. In 2022 a team of researchers affiliated with universities in Brazil and New York collaborated on a scientific literature review examining studies focusing on resistance training, variation, muscle hypertrophy (muscle mass), and strength.
“The objective of this review was to review the effects of exercise variation on muscle hypertrophy and strength. A search of the literature was conducted using PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, and Web of Science databases. Eight studies were identified as meeting inclusion criteria.” the researchers state about their effort.
“The available studies indicate that varying exercise selection can influence muscle hypertrophy and strength gains. Some degree of systematic variation seems to enhance regional hypertrophic adaptations and maximize dynamic strength, whereas excessive, random variation may compromise muscular gains.” the researchers concluded.
Arnold Schwarzenegger recommended switching some of your lifts every 3 to 6 months in his book, but what he is also basically saying is to stick to your routine for 3 to 6 month cycles as well. Sticking to your routine helps provide time to track our progress and also gives your muscles time to keep acclimating to increased resistance to work towards hitting their ceiling. Then, as Arnold says, you mix it up to ‘shock’ your muscles and keep the growth going.
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