"You need to change exercises often to shock the muscles!" - Do we really?

 With more and more fitness influencers on IG, TikTok, Youtube, to drive content and clicks they come up new exercises all the time and try to persuade people "this is the newest best exercise for XYZ".

Do we need to change exercises? Probably. With new stimulus the muscles respond better, the brain responds a little better to newness, there is new excitement with a new exercise for some time.

However, we should remember muscles recognize stress, nothing more. The back muscles do not know whether you are doing barbell rows, chest-supported rows or dumbbell rows. They respond to stress, load, different positions.

I strongly believe we benefit from changing accessory exercises, plyometric exercises, targeted hypertrophy exercises, exercises for muscle imbalances. These can be more modified with using bands, etc.

But there are a few basic compound exercises which are so great, with so great muscle and strength building qualities and tested by millions of lifters for decades that we should use them all the time and never change them. Sure, you can apply different loads, stances, tempo, etc. but they are so great they stay in the template for decades.

Here are my pics:

1/ SQUAT

Probably the best exercise for whole lower body development; quads, adductors, hams (to some extent), glutes, core. Variations? Low bar, high bar, box squats, tempo squats, pause squats, front squats.

Personal picks: low bar squat for heavy triples, front squat for heavy doubles, pause squats for heavy doubles.

2/ DEADLIFT

Whole lower body movement plus posterior chain. They hit so much muscle it is hard to believe. You should deadlift your whole life. One of the most basic human movements - to pick heavy sh*t off the groud. Variations? Sumo, conventional, deficit, RDL, pause deadlifts, deadlifts up to knees.

Personal picks: conventional for triples and doubles, deficit for heavy triples, RDLs for heavy 5's, pause deadlifts for triples which hit core like nothing else.

3/ OVERHEAD PRESSING

Also one of the basic patterns; overhead pressing hits shoulders, traps, triceps, middle back, core. Variations? OHP, push press, behind neck press, DB presses, KB press, KB thruster.

Personal picks: OHP for strict 5's, very heavy push press for heavy doubles, seated behind the neck press for 5's very strict with a pause at top. Barbell thrusters for time.

4/ BENCH PRESSING

No need for any intro here. Yes, you can bench press your whole life with cool shoulders, you just need to vary the loads and have solid surrounding muscles for support: upper back, lats, triceps, biceps. Bench pressing exercises hit chest, triceps, shoulders and serratus anterior muscles which are very important for posture. Variations? Bench press, close-grip bench press, board press, floor press, DB bench press, DB floor press, paused bench press.

Personal picks: bench press for triples, paused bench for doubles, close-grip bench press for 5's.

5/ BAR DIPS

This truly is an upper body squats. They hit triceps, pecs, shoulders in perfect sync. Variations? None. Just vary the load. Go bodyweight only for high-rep sets and super heavy with added weight.

Personal picks: very heavy for 5's or sets of 20 with bodyweight only.

6/ PULL-UPS

An exercise which has been around for 200+ years and righfully so. They hit upper back, lats, shoulders, mid back, biceps, forearms, grip. Dead hangs for 2+ mins cure shoulders. Just try them. Hang for 2+ mins and you'll feel all those little cracks and pops around your shoulders - wonder corrections for your posture. Variations? Grip mainly. Pronated, supinated, parallel, cobra pull-ups, BW only, with added weight.

Personal picks: very heavy pull-ups with added weight for triples and doubles. BW only high-rep pull-ups.

7/ ROWS

These really can add slabs of muscle to your frame. They add to bench press, squat and deadlift because a massive upper back = strong person overall. Variations: barbell rows, DB rows, Meadows rows for rhomboids, seal rows, machine rows, low cable rows.

Personal picks: strict seal rows where I have to use back muscles only. Very heavy DB rows.

That's about it. Variations and change is a spice of life, they say. Vary the loads, angles, frequency; change exercises for smaller muscle groups, lagging muscles, change jump exercises, plyometrics, add in Oly lifts variations, play with kettlebells, you name it. But the bread and butter should not change.

Been squatting and overhead pressing on Mondays for 25 years? Good. Change nothing and keep going. You are on the right track :-)

deficit deadlifts

Deficit pulls are some of he best deadlift variations you can do. They increase the ROM thus increasing the time under tension, build more muscle mass and improve the initial part of the pull where most people tend to struggle. 

There are three variations I like to do and I recommend you try them all. 

1/ deficit deadlift off low deficit 

These would be done standing on a 1 inch deficit and the form would mimick as close as possible your regular deadlift. These have a very high carryover to regular pulls. The initial pull is going to be a bit more difficult and you need to set up perfectly before the pull, taking max slack out of the bar and really engage your glutes. 

You can swap these with regular deadlifts for, say, a 3 week wave, maybe: week 1 - 3 sets of 3 medium heavy, week 2 - 3 sets of 3 heavy, week 3 - 2 sets of 2 very heavy. 

2/ deficit deadlift off high deficit 

Typically done while standing on a 4 inch box. You have to set up a bit differently sinking your hips lower and the initial pull will require more quads, more glutes and better core strength. These are done typically as your accessory pull, say, 4 sets of 3 with 65% of max pull. 

3/ snatch grip deadlift off high deficit 

These suck. I hate those. You have to start with your hips really, really low and you will have to reduce the weight significantly. But they hit your quads, hips and the whole posterior chain like nothing else.

Use 40-50% of your max deadlift for, say, 3 sets of 4 as a heavy accesory lift. 

Your deadlift should increase after incorporating some of the above into a 6-8 week building cycle. Good luck!

How to increase volume? FREQUENCY!

We all know from research that volume gives results. Rather a proper correlation of volume and intensity but that is not what I want to write about today. Simplified, the lifter who accummulated the biggest tonnage lifted over several months (volume) is going to be the strongest at the meet.

Very important: provided the maximal volume is just below your individual limit of recovery and your body can adapt to the training stimulus. This is individual and you have to find out for yourself.

But how do you increase volume without making the sessions too long and too tiring tapping into you recovery reserves and without overtraining? You have to do two things: adding sets with frequency and moderating intensity levels. Most of the sessions are going to be relatively short and the % of intensity is goin to be faily low.

It is common for lifters in the former Eastern bloc to squat 2-3x a week, bench press 3x a week and deadlift 2x a week. It has many benefits: you practice the competition lifts a lot, you build the key muscle groups, you increase the neuromuscular coordination for the powerlifts.

Below is and example of a 4 week cycle where three weeks are heavy or moderate heavy and the 4th week is a deload week. you take the doubles from the third week as your estimate for your new max for calculating poundages for the next 4-week cycle. There is nothing wrong increasing the weights every other cycle. Especially if you are an experienced lifter, progression is going to be slow.

week 1

squat 4 x 4 (4 sets of 4) @ 70%

pause bench press 5 x 2 @ 65% (2 sec pause)

hypers 2-3 sets

triceps pushdowns 2-3 sets

paused deadlift 4 x 3 @ 65%

bench press 4 x 4 @ 70%

DB Bulgarian split squats 2-3 sets

GHR 2-3 sets

bench press 5 x 3 @ 75%

squat 5 x 3 @ 75%

pull-ups 2-3 sets

week 2

squat 5 x 3 @ 80%

incline bench press 3 x 6

Paloff press 2-3 sets

lat pulldowns 2-3 sets

deadlift 4 x 3 @ 75%

bench press 1x 5 @ 65%, 2 x 4 @ 70%, 2 x 3 @ 75%, 3 x 2 @ 80%, 2 x 3 @ 75%, 2 x 4 @ 65%, 1 x 6 @ 60%, 1 x 8 @ 55%

face pulls 2-3 sets

bench press 5 x 3 @ 80%

pause squat 3 x 2 @ 65%

GHR 2-3 sets

hypers 2-3 sets

week 3

squat 5 x 3 @ 80%

bench press 5 x 3 @ 80%

squat 3 x 3 @ 70%

hypers 2-3 sets

deadlift 3 x 2 @ 85-90%

paused bench press 5 x 2 @ 70%

DB Bulgarian split squat 2-3 sets

squat 4 x 2 @ 85-90%

bench press 4 x 2 @ 85-90%

triceps pushdowns 2-3 sets

week 4

squat 2 x 2 @ 65%

bench press 2 x 2 @ 65%

pull-ups 2-3 sets

deficit deadlift 2 x 2 @ 65%

incline bench press 3 x 6

DB rows

bench press 3 x 3 @ 70%

squat 3 x 3 @ 70%

GHR 2-3 sets

dynamic side plank 2 sets

Good luck :)