Knowing when it’s time to change your workout plan can be tough: on one hand, you don’t want to flip-flop between different exercises too often, otherwise you’ll never give your body the chance to adapt and get stronger. On the other hand, there comes a time when your workouts will need a freshen up in order to encourage progress. But, how do you know when it’s time for the latter?
“I can’t tell you exactly when to switch things up, you’re going to have to pay attention to what your own body is telling you,” says Steve Chambers, gym manager and certified personal trainer at Ultimate Performance. “But, there are some telltale signs, regardless of whether you’re a novice or a pro, that will indicate when it’s time to make changes to your programme.”
Let’s jump into them below…
1. Your progress has come to a standstill
Been stuck on the same weight for weeks on end? Struggling to hit that extra rep? Hitting a plateau is one of the key signs that your workout may need changing. However, if you’re an advanced gym goer, it could also be a sign that you’re ready for a deload.
Plateuing is normal, especially if you’ve been doing the same exercise, day in day out, for weeks (or even months) on end. Rather than changing your entire workout, Steve advises making ‘micro-adjustments’ to break through the plateau.
“Tweak your rep and/or set ranges, or introduce auxiliary variations. For example, swapping spilt squats for front foot elevated split squats,” he says. These slight adjustments will provide your body with a new challenge in order to continue making progress.
2. You keep getting injured or feeling sore
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“Injuries are also pretty telling signs that you need to tweak things,” Steve adds. Injuries and aches can be down to a couple of things: you’re not getting enough recovery, or you may not have developed enough motor control for the exercise you’re trying to perform, and therefore can’t express it properly.
If it’s the first, then rather than tweak your workout, the change you need to make is taking a break from it. Factoring in enough recovery days and taking a deload period (if you’re lifting very heavy weights) is key when it comes to making progress. If you don’t, you could risk going into overtraining territory.
For those who keep getting injured because they haven’t developed enough motor control for a particular exercise (simply, you can’t perform the exercise with sufficient form), you can adjust exercises by choosing different variations – for example, if you struggle with Bulgarian split squats, opt for a split stance squat instead; it’s still a unilateral exercise in the lunge pattern, but it provides more stability.
3. You’re bored
Steve says this needs to be taken with “a pillar, not just a pinch of salt”. Ask yourself, are you genuinely bored, or are you trying to take the easy way out of not doing an exercise that you don’t particularly like because it’s a challenge?
“The most successful trainees are those who consistently incorporate tough compound moves such as squats, split squats, deadlifts, bench presses etc, into their routine, and don’t ditch them for ‘easier’ isolation moves just because they’re too hard,” he says.
However, if it is the first answer, and you’ve been grinding away at the same exercise for a significant period of time, then yes, it could be time for a switch-up. After all, your workout needs to be engaging and enjoyable, as the best workout is the one that’s followed. Just make sure you’re including a balance of what you want and need in order to hit your goals.
A final word
“Variation can be useful, but it has to be purposeful,” Steve says. “You should always perform core exercises for long enough to allow for progressive overload to take effect – only start to rotate exercises when progress stalls.”
If you’re wondering whether you should be switching things up every 4 weeks, 6 weeks or every couple of months, Steve also explains here how often you should change your workouts.
