The fallacy of variety

The fallacy of variety

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

The above quote is attributed to Aristotle, who was not renowned for his lifting, but I think it sums up nicely what I consider an important part of strength and muscular development.

I was asked recently whether you need to regularly change exercises and programme to progress. There isn’t a simplistic answer, but if I were pushed to a yes or no, I would say no, there is, as with all things, a little more to it, so allow me to elaborate.

Now I have been training for 30+ years and I could pick up any of my training diaries, open any page and pretty much guarantee that the words “squat”, “bench press” or “deadlift” will be on that page. As Dan John notes, lifters lift, throwers throw, runners run, swimmers swim etc.

It is true that if I were to follow the exact same programme, with the exact same sets and reps that I would reach a point of diminishing returns because an organism responds to the specific demands imposed on them (though you can continue the same programme a lot longer than people realise and continue to progress).  This is not just true of strength training. If you ran precisely three miles, three times a week you would get faster, up unto a point, then you would start to see those returns in speed decline until you reached a point where no more improvement in times could be made. When runners want to improve, they will usually try things like running further, or sprint intervals, hill sprints, increasing the total weekly distance, fartleks and so on.  What they don’t tend to do is suddenly switch to cycling or jump on the Concept2 and expect it to elicit improvement to their running.  They still run; they just change the parameters.

The same principle is true of strength. It should be blindingly obvious, but it’s often missed in the excitement of variety.  People change their programs because they think they need to and try different exercises in the hope of new results. The reality is if you switch to a new exercise, or one you haven’t done in a while you have to learn the technique again.  You see initial progress as your technique and skill begins to improve, but you switch again without fully mastering the movement, and you’re back to learning a new skill and seeing improvement due to neurological efficiency in performing the new movement rather than muscular development and true progress.

This takes us back to Aristotle; We are what we repeatedly do – This, dear reader, is mastery.

“It takes 10,000 hours to truly master anything”[1]  

I think that number seems a little arbitrary, but I think we can all agree that if you want to master something you must put time into practising it.  It took me months of daily practice to be able to perform a handstand. When I was a young weightlifter, we spent three months just learning how to pull and the power variants before the full movements were really considered. It took me over a year of daily practice to reach a point where I could juggle cannonballs (yes, I actually do that), and it took me many years to reach a point where my squat, bench press and deadlift were at a level where I regularly took trophies home from competitions.  I didn’t get to that point by changing between Squats and lunges and leg presses and leg extensions.  I got there by squatting, regularly, week in, week out. The parameters that changed were loading and volume. I’ve done higher volumes such 6x6 or  4,4,4,3,3,3,2,2,2,1,1,1,  I’ve done 5x5,  5x3,  5,4,3,2,1, 8x2,  10x1 I’ve done 1,1,1,1,3,3,3,3  and 1,1,1,1,1,5,5,5,5,5; and they all worked, as long as I put the work in.  The same is true for bench, the same is true for any lift. The focus is on making each lift the same, each repetition the same as the last; because “practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice does”[2]. Excellence, then, is not an act, it is a habit.

[1]Attributed to Malcolm Gladwell

[2] Attributed to Pavel Tsatsouline