“A structured resistance routine with appropriate series and weights is sufficient”
When you enter the world gym it is quite likely that two great mantras: “You have to change exercises constantly so that the muscle does not get used to it” and “The more sets and weight we load, the more the muscle will grow.” However, the latest scientific evidence is dismantling these popular beliefs piece by piece to make way for much more efficient training. A new study published in April in the journal Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport forces us to rethink how we create our routines, especially if we are looking to have a much larger arm. To do this, the researchers set out to resolve a fundamental question: is it really necessary to increase the number of sets or vary the exercises constantly to continue gaining muscle? To figure it out, they recruited 32 young adults with no prior strength training experience and subjected them to a 14 week protocol. The first six weeks were standard conditioning, where all participants gained a remarkable 4.0% of lean mass in their upper limbs, measured with extremely high precision using scanners. DEXA. The real test came over the next eight weeks, where they divided the subjects into four groups. Here one group kept the same basic routine, while the second group increased the number of sets they did of an exercise and the third also changed the type of exercise. And to bring it all together, the fourth group of young people increased both the number of series and the type of exercise. The result. There was no statistically significant difference between these four groups, since the group that limited itself to doing the basic routine with sufficient effort gained 3.1% of lean mass, even surpassing the group that had much more weight in its exercises and technically tying with those who varied exercises. The conclusion that can be drawn here is good news for beginners, since overcomplication offers no magical advantages over a solid and consistent routine. A bad idea. The conception we have that the muscle gets used to exercise and needs a “surprise” for it to start growing as we want, the truth is that it is a myth, as we are seeing. And in case there was any doubt, another article published in 2022 analyzed more than 240 participants to see if varying exercises had any type of advantage. Here it was seen that varying systematically can help regional hypertrophy, but changing too quickly or without any strategy behind it can compromise muscle gains. And if you change your routine every week, the nervous system spends time learning the coordination of the new movement, instead of effectively recruiting muscle fibers to make them grow. How much do you have to train? If constantly changing isn’t the key, is living in the gym? Here a large review crossed data from 4,784 people to determine what is recommended It is a minimum of 10 weekly series per muscle group to optimize hypertrophy. When it comes to frequency, the reality is that training a muscle once a week or three times gives very similar results as long as the total weekly weight is the same. This means that, if you do 12 sets of biceps a week, it doesn’t matter if you do 12 on Monday, or 6 on Monday and 6 on Thursday. Don’t change for the sake of changing. Instead of randomly varying exercises, science suggests choosing the most biomechanically effective movements and progressing through them. Here, a study done in 2023 compared triceps training with the arms above the head versus neutral positions and the result was clear: the overhead position generated 28.5% hypertrophy in the long head of the triceps, compared to 19.6% in the neutral position. They did not grow more because they were “confusing the muscle,” but because the elongated position generated greater mechanical tension. With all this, we must keep in mind that the change of exercises must be done according to biomechanics and with a sense behind it. In Xataka | Walking does not count as “exercising”: for the 10,000 steps a day to be effective, the x3 rule must be applied
