Most fitness experts recommend changing your workout routine every four to six weeks, but this isn’t written in stone. In some cases, you may need to change your exercise routine more or less often since people adapt to a workout at different rates. Here are some signs it’s time to change your workout routine.
Your Workout No Longer Challenges You
A workout should be hard enough to challenge your muscles so they’ll continue to grow. When you no longer feel challenged by your current routine, it’s time to give your muscles a new training stimulus. As mentioned, you don’t have to make a complete overhaul. Put the dumbbells aside and use barbells or do sets using resistance bands to work your muscles in a different way. Do super slow weight training or add more compound movements that work more muscle groups to increase the stimulus you place on your body.
If your cardiovascular workout no longer makes you sweat, add some high-intensity intervals. One of the most effective is Tabata intervals, 20 seconds of high intensity followed by 10 seconds of recovery. You will see several Tabata inspired routines in my new CrossFire and To The Max workouts. Repeat this sequence as many times as you can for a challenging fat-burning, cardiovascular workout. Rest one minute, and do a few more Tabata intervals. If you work out at a higher intensity, you don’t need to work out as long to get a training effect and you’ll get more of an afterburn.
You Workout Bores You
Are you losing your motivation to work out? Do the same routine long enough, and you’ll eventually become bored. Boredom is one reason that people ditch their workout routine and head back to their easy chair. If you’re having motivation problems, try a new exercise DVD or new exercise class to break the monotony.
Cardio routines can become monotonous quickly, especially if you use the elliptical machine and treadmill. Adding intervals breaks the monotony, but you can also try a completely different form of cardio. Hop off the treadmill, and do bodyweight cardio where you move from one compound exercise to the next without resting or do a kettlebell routine to get your fat-burning furnaces firing again. Work out with a boot camp DVD or grab a jump rope and do jump rope intervals. Try a kickboxing or fast-paced step workout DVD for even more variety.
Sometimes you can lose your enthusiasm for working out because you’re overtraining. If you’re feeling fatigued and lack motivation, take a few days off. Sometimes that’s all it takes to rekindle your enthusiasm for working out.
You’re No Longer Seeing Results
This is another sign that it’s time to shake things up. When you do the same routine over and over, your body eventually adapts, as you would expect it too. When this happens, you stop seeing gains. Your weight loss may also plateau as your body burns fewer calories. If you still enjoy your current routine, don’t overhaul it completely. Add more intervals to your cardio workout, and change the speed of your strength-training reps. Super-slow strength training, negative and drop sets are good ways to restart muscle growth, but be prepared to be sore.
You’ve Changed Your Goals
Another time you’ll want to change your routine is when you change your fitness goals. If you’ve reached your desired weight through diet and cardio training and want to add more definition, change your routine to emphasis strength-training. Likewise, if you can’t seem to get those six-pack abs to show despite intense abdominal and core work, add more high-intensity cardio. Reevaluate your goals and what you’re trying to achieve periodically, and adjust your workout accordingly.
The Bottom Line?
Changing your exercising routine periodically will help you continue to get the results you want and reduce boredom. It’ll also ensure your workout is consistent with your fitness goals.
Related Articles By Cathe:
Why Do Some People Stick with an Exercise Routine and Others Not?
Is Your Exercise Routine on Autopilot? Why It’s Important to Break Out of the Comfort Zone
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OMG!!! I love this young lady’s core! I want to change my routine to get those (lol!)!
I have actually never had a set rotation. I choose whatever appeals to me that day, I have over 80 DVD’s and still use at least half of them. Is it bad to do it that way? I have tried to find out if there is an advantage to doing the same workouts for several weeks and have never found anything to reveal an advantage or disadvantage. I guess I just get bored easily and need to change them up daily and I figure as long as I’m moving that can’t be bad.
“This is another sign that it’s time to shake things up. When you do the same routine over and ”
Stagnation occurs with every sporting event if there is no diversity. That is why a lot of popular fitness programs add diversity at different stages of the training programs. It works and slows down the boredom
Greg V
BestStrengthTrainingRoutines.com
I do like variety which is why I am going to start playing tennis, and back to bad minton which is so much fun and a great outdoor workout, plus getting my bike riding on again!!
I love this article! I’m a Beachbody coach and I was just telling one of my followers the same thing yesterday! I changed up my routine 2 months ago by working out to your slow and heavy series! I can’t believe the results I’ve seen so far! Thank you Cathe 🙂
@Nancy above…I workout like you do. I have an extensive DVD collection, which is probably 75% Cathe, but I have a lot of Kelly Coffey-Meyer and Jillian Michaels too. I do something different every day but try to mix it up so I am not doing heavy weights back to back. I also have workouts for those days when I am very sore, but still want to workout, and many stretch workout DVDs. I am in great shape and think switching things up like this works for me. I rarely get bored. If I do, I have a workout for that!
@Nancy and Karen-I too have a big variety of workout dvd’s and would definitely get bored if I did the same thing even more than once a week. I certainly don’t look like the girl in the picture above but at 46, I’m in pretty good shape. I’ve never been able to lose my small belly (had twins at 40) but other than that I feel great and fit into a size 4. I go from kick boxing to slow and heavy to lots of reps to piloxing to Cathe’s gym routines, etc. One thing is for sure though, if I had to choose one trainer’s dvd’s it would absolutely be Cathe’s. I’m glad this topic was addressed since I was also wondering if mixing it up on a constant basis is a good thing. I’d love to hear a trainer’s perspective on this.