Well, I have some terrific news. If your resolution has anything to do with losing weight, building muscle, or eating healthy, consider this the end of your research. Below is everything you will need to cross these resolutions off your list for good.

• The Ultimate Weight Loss Guide
  Everything you’ll ever need to know about losing weight in one convenient, insanely comprehensive, easy-to-understand guide. It’s the only weight loss article you’ll ever need to read. Seriously.
• The Ultimate Guide To Building Muscle
  The muscle building equivalent to the above article, this guide will walk you through the entire process of every single thing you need to do (and not do) in order to successfully build muscle.
• The Beginner’s Guide To Diet, Nutrition & Healthy Eating
  Not really interested in focusing solely on weight loss or building muscle? More just looking for a crash course in how to improve your entire diet and eat healthy? This is the guide for you.

Happy New Year everyone. Plenty of more good stuff is on the way for 2009.

I ask this question because, more often than not, the answer most people will give is wrong. In a lot of those cases, it’s also quite dumb.

For example, have you ever heard something along the lines of “you should change your workout every 6 weeks to shock your body.” Feel free to replace “6 weeks” with 2 weeks, or 4 weeks, or 8 weeks, or 10 weeks or your own favorite set time frame.

Either way, it’s all still wrong and quite dumb.

That whole idea of having to change your workout every X amount of days, weeks or months to “shock your body” is complete BS.

As I’ve mentioned before, the #1 thing you need to do to get anything resembling good results from any form of exercise is consistently force your body to improve. It’s the progressive overload principle. If you want to increase muscle, strength, flexibility, speed, explosiveness, endurance or just your overall fitness level, you must work to increase the demands you are placing on your body.

For example, if you can only jog for 5 minutes before having to stop to walk, the only way you will ever be able to jog more than 5 minutes is by gradually forcing your body to try to jog more than 5 minutes. Try 5 minutes and 20 seconds next time. Then 5 minutes and 40 seconds the time after that.

If you can currently lift 50lbs for 8 reps, the only way you will ever increase muscle or strength is by working to lift 50lbs 9 times, or 10 times, or 55lbs 8 times, or something similar.

The point I’m getting at here is that the only thing that makes your body improve is gradual progression. Changing your workout every X weeks to “shock” your body is just nonsense that, if anything, is only counterproductive to what you actually need to do.

Think about it. How can you progress at something if you are constantly changing what it is you are doing? Your goal with exercise (assuming you’re not a fan of crappy results) is to do something consistently, and then progress at it as often as you can. If you keep changing it, all you really end up doing it stopping yourself from progressing.

Progression is the one and only type of change that your body requires.

So, does that mean your workout should stay exactly the same for the next 50 years? Not exactly. There are 2 reasons you SHOULD change your workout. They are:

1. When progress stops.
   If what you’re doing is working, keep doing it until it stops working. It seems like a pretty simple concept, but apparently it isn’t. One of the dumbest things I hear/see people do all the time is find something that works, and then change it solely because it’s been “6 weeks and it’s time to change it.” That’s just silly.

   If you’re doing something that is working well, don’t stop doing it. Whether it works for 6 months, a year, 5 years, 10 years or 50 years, as long as it’s working and progression is still happening at an acceptable rate, there is absolutely no reason to change it. No matter what some bad source of information tells you (bodybuilding magazine, some dumb personal trainer at the gym, some idiot on a fitness related forum, etc.), your workout doesn’t need to be changed, and your body doesn’t need to be shocked. It just needs to progress, and as long as you’re doing that… that’s all that really matters.

2. When boredom starts.
   There is however one other reason that I feel would warrant a change to your workout… boredom. Now, hear me out. If you’re getting bored with your workout every other week, you really just need to suck it up and stop being such a baby. Seriously. However, if after a somewhat longer period of time (where there was at least some sane amount of consistency) you become bored with what you’re doing to the point where it may hinder your progress… you should probably change something.
   What that means is, if you become so bored and/or uninterested with your workout that it’s preventing you from working hard and putting in a good amount of effort, or even causing you to miss or think about missing some workouts, you should change something. Even if what you’re doing is working, make a change. Because, while the short term progress may be good, if it’s going to cause long term problems (like you quitting because you’ve lost interest) then this is the one time when change should be made even though what you’re doing is working.

Now, the next question you may have is, if one of the above reasons presents itself, what type of change should you make to your workout? Something big? Something small? Well, this one is entirely up to you.

For a cardio example, if you’re currently jogging on a treadmill, you could make a change as small as jogging somewhere else (outside, around a track, etc.). You could also make a change as big as riding a bike or swimming.

For weight training the number of options become even larger. If you currently work certain muscles on certain days, you could keep everything in the workout the same and just change the days. You could change exercises. You could switch a machine exercise to a barbell exercise, or a barbell exercise to a dumbbell exercise. If you rest 2 minutes between sets, you can rest a minute and 30 seconds between sets. If you do 3 sets of 10 reps, you can do 4 sets of 6 reps, or 5 sets of 5, or 3 sets of 12, or 4 sets of 8, or 8 sets of 3, and so on. If you normally do exercise A and then exercise B, you can do exercise B first and then exercise A.

There’s literally dozens of changes you can make, some big, some small. I personally make fairly small changes when it comes time to make a change. For example, I’ve been using the same

Monday: Upper body
Tuesday: Lower body
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Upper body
Friday: Lower body
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off

split for years now and see no reason to change that simple template. What I will change are things like set/rep ranges like in the examples I mentioned before. An exercise I’m doing 3 sets of 8-10 with may become 4 sets of 6-8 or the other way around. Or, I’ll switch from lunges to split squats, or pull ups with an overhand grip to pull ups with an underhand grip. Back squats to front squats. Standing overhead presses to seated overhead presses. Barbell rows to dumbbell rows. I’m sure you get the picture.

In case you’re wondering, these changes do NOT happen daily, or weekly, or even monthly. They happen only when one of the 2 reasons mentioned above happen. Otherwise, I’m not “shocking” a damn thing.

And, if you would like to get good results from your workout, adopting this common sense concept is probably a pretty good idea.

If the above situation sounds a bit familiar, don’t feel too bad. It’s an extremely common problem that many people have when doing back exercises, and I can tell you this both from first hand experience, and from watching it happen daily in my gym.

The way I see it, there are usually 3 causes for this:

1. Too much weight is being used (mostly a guy thing).
2. Your back is, well, in back of you, and this prevents you from being able to see the back muscles working or even really visualize the back muscles working.
3. You just don’t know how to properly activate your back in the first place.

Whatever the cause, I’m going to tell you the solution that originally helped me fix my problem with back exercises. Chances are it will help you too.

This is what makes the biceps do all of the work instead of the back. You don’t want to pull the weight to you. Most people do back exercises by trying to pull the weight (barbell or dumbbell or some kind of handle) towards them. Or, in the case of pull ups and chin ups, pull themselves towards the bar. This is the wrong way to think about it, and is what leads to the biceps taking over the movement. Instead…

Instead of thinking in terms of pulling the weight to you, think in terms of trying to pull your elbows behind you. This is really the key trick to using less biceps and more back. Imagine that your hands and forearms are nothing but hooks attached to your elbows. These “hooks” are doing nothing more than connecting your elbows to the barbell/dumbbell/handle or whatever it is you are going to be pulling. Now, once “connected,” just focus on pulling your elbows back as though you are trying to hit someone who is standing directly behind you. In the case of vertical movements like pull ups, chin ups and lat pull downs, you’d imagine you are trying to pull your elbows down and slightly back.

This may take a small bit of practice for some people, but it’s worth it. Once you can teach yourself to pull through your elbows rather than your hands, you’ll notice a very big difference in what body part (back or biceps) is doing the majority of the work during back exercises.

Once you reach the point of each rep when your elbows are pulled either back (if it’s a horizontal back movement like a row) or down (if it’s a vertical back movement like pull ups or lat pull downs), hold that position for 1 second and squeeze as though you are trying to make your elbows touch each other behind your back. Doing so will not only help get you to use your back even more, but it will also ensure that you aren’t using more weight than you should be. If you are, you’ll find it pretty tough/impossible to hold each rep for 1 second. If this is the case, just lower the weight a bit until you can do this correctly.

It’s pretty much impossible to do any sort of pulling exercise without the biceps being used at least a little, just like it’s impossible to do a pushing exercise (bench press, overhead press, etc.) without using the triceps. What I’m trying to say is, if you’re doing some back stuff, and you feel like your biceps did something, it’s perfectly normal and really unavoidable. In fact, it’s good. Heavy pulling (and heavy pushing) is what will add the most muscle/strength to your arms, not direct arm work. However, it’s when it’s mostly biceps that are doing the work during back exercises that it becomes a problem… and the above tips will definitely help you prevent that from happening.