How Often Should Exercise Routines Be Changed?

How often should I change exercise routines?

A: The short answer: whenever you get stale with your current routine.

Muscle Media writer Charles Poliquin suggests changing routines every 3 weeks or 6 workouts (he has his athletes train each bodypart twice a week apparently). Since I can’t stand this much volume, I only work each muscle group once a week. Should I change my routine every 6 weeks or every 3? Since Poliquin also works with extremely gifted athletes (Olympians), should normal people (like me) change routines less frequently than this? I’ve read some authors in other magazines saying they believe that 3 weeks on one routine is too frequent of a change…   Poliquin also says you should change routines when you get bored with them. is this good advice? I get pretty damn bored after 3 weeks and start to dread going back to the gym. I’ve also been lifting for a couple of years if that makes a difference.

I think how often you need to change your exercise routine depends on a lot of factors. One is probably personality. If you are bored with your workout (and people get bored at different rates), you won’t be pushing as hard (or you may skip workouts entirely, funny how it’s always leg day that we skip). Although we can debate this routine vs. that routine, we can all agree that working hard is one of the single biggest factors in reaching your goals. So if mixing up your workouts to avoid boredom means that you push harder during your workout, I think it makes sense.

Now, on the other hand, you also have to consider how long it takes you to start getting results from your training. I’ve made the frequent mistake of changing routines too often wih the end result being I end up spinning my wheels. When you change a routine (exercises, sets, reps, whatever) you may take a couple of weeks to figure out the correct weights to use, or re-learn form if you introduce an exercise that you haven’t done before. In which case changing too soon may be a negative.

That is, let’s say you haven’t deadlifting for a bunch of months and decide to start doing them. First you have to re-perfect your form, which may take a week or two and which must be done at a submaximal level. Then you start ramping up the intensity, raising weight or training to failure or whatever. If you are scheduled to change routines again in 3 weeks, you might only get 1 productive week of training with that exercise before it’s time to change things up.

As a more real-world example, a guy I’m working with is just coming off a heavy strength cycle. Lots of low reps, heavy weights, etc. So he’s pretty beat up, wrists are bothering him a bit, etc. So it was time to move back into some more typical growth work (and bring up lagging bodyparts). First thing I wanted him to do was spend a couple of weeks submaximally to let the little aches and pains go away. But I went ahead and started him on the program that I’m gonna have him use. he spent 2 weeks subimaximally, also working on form on a few new exercises, but he’s into maximal work now. I’m gonna hammer him on this routine until he starts to get stale (which won’t take long, it’s a big jump in volume) and then switch things up. But if you include the 2 weeks he spent submaximally, he might be on this program for 6-7 weeks total.

Does how often you change routines depend on your exercise goals? Would switching routines more or less frequently be better for strength or growth? My goal is growth if it matters.

I think to a degree how often you change depends on goals. If pure strength is you goal, I’m assuming that you have some specific exercise (perhaps bench press or squat) that you want to improve in which cases sticking with that movement a bit longer may be useful. Poliquin seems to think that growth will be better with more variety as the body may recruit motor units in a different order (giving more muscle fibers a chance to get a growth stimulus).

I guess the most general answer would be that it’s very dependent on the person. I can hammer away at the same movements for months without getting bored, just adding a little bit of weight to the bar. But I usually take a 3-5 week run-up at submaximal weights before I start nearing my previous bests. This is sometimes called intensity cycling and pretty much mandates that you stick with the same routine for a while to make progress above and beyond your previous best. As well since I’m fairly slow to put on muscle, I have learned to stick with teh same routine for a while to evaluate if I’m making progress or not.

Hope that vague answer helps!

About the author

Lyle McDonald

Lyle McDonald+ is the author of the Ketogenic Diet as well as the Rapid Fat Loss Handbook and the Guide to Flexible Dieting. He has been interested in all aspects of human performance physiology since becoming involved in competitive sports as a teenager. Pursuing a degree in Physiological Sciences from UCLA, he has devoted nearly 20 years of his life to studying human physiology and the science, art and practice of human performance, muscle gain, fat loss and body recomposition.