The fantastic four
📌Some people vary their exercises—even daily—in the belief that this creates “muscle confusion” and therefore leads to more microtears.
First, it’s worth clarifying—and putting it simply—that you can change a training program while keeping the same exercises (or at least most of them).
What do I mean? You can change the training stimulus (metabolic or tension-based) by adding advanced techniques such as dropsets, rest-pause, and so on…
But back to the topic…
In one study, participants performed 5 sets of 6 repetitions of incline-bench biceps curls. After 7 days, one group performed the same exercise, while the other performed preacher-bench biceps curls, also for 5 sets of 6 repetitions.
The muscle damage markers assessed over the 4 days after the session showed no differences between the groups!
Conclusion about the fantastic four
Randomly varying exercises does not seem to “confuse” the muscle when the goal is hypertrophy. Sticking to a good training program as closely as possible is important for tracking your progress (increasing your weights, etc.). In future training programs, changing some exercises is important mainly for motivation.
Focus on the basics
The tried-and-true basics, the fantastic four… barbell squats, lunges, leg presses, Romanian deadlifts… It’s no mystery!
Remember: it’s important to understand that all compound movements, such as squats, single-leg lunges, and leg presses, work both the back and front of the thigh (quadriceps), as well as the glutes! Put simply: whenever you use a compound exercise to train your “legs,” you’re training your glutes too—and vice versa.
There are variations you can do to emphasize one area or another, but it’s not possible to completely isolate the muscles mentioned when doing these compound exercises!
And training your LOWER BODY on consecutive days will NOT provide any benefits!
