Is Exercise Variety Necessary?

The classic Iron Culture duo hosts this week’s episode to discuss exercise variety. How have the views on this topic changed over the years and why? First, we need to understand how and when bodybuilding separated from strength sport, equipment availability changes over time, and how these factors impacted the perception of exercise variety. From the Weider “Muscle Confusion Principle” to motor learning concepts like varied practice, there’s been discussion of exercise variety in both the trenches and research for decades. In the modern era, concepts like regional hypertrophy and more nuanced understanding of functional anatomy have become more common and widely understood and accepted, leading to the acceptance that at least for hypertrophy, higher exercise variety is necessary to maximise the development of specific muscle groups. But, as they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Many without a sufficiently complete understanding of anatomy make errors when it comes to claims about exercise selection and variety for bodybuilding. So listen in on this episode as we talk through the history, science and culture of exercise variety for hypertrophy, as well as strength! 00:00 A duo episode without the LLM (Chat-GPT) Eric 03:26 Getting into the topic of variety – starting with the muscle confusion principle 15:03 Exercise variation and regional hypertrophy Antonio 2000 Nonuniform Response of Skeletal Muscle to Heavy Resistance Training Can Bodybuilders Induce Regional Muscle Hypertrophy? https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Abstract/2000/02000/Nonuniform_Response_of_Skeletal_Muscle_to_Heavy.18.aspx 21:39 The importance of understanding functional anatomy and discussing the evidence Chillibeck 1998 A comparison of strength and muscle mass increases during resistance training in young women https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9459538/  Rauch 2020 Auto-Regulated Exercise Selection Training Regimen Produces Small Increases in Lean Body Mass and Maximal Strength Adaptations in Strength-trained Individuals https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29016481/  Burke 2024 Exercise Selection Differentially Influences Lower Body Regional Muscle Development https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42978-024-00299-4  Kubo 2019 Effects of squat training with different depths on lower limb muscle volumes  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31230110/ Brandão 2020 Varying the Order of Combinations of Single- and Multi-Joint Exercises Differentially Affects Resistance Training Adaptations https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32149887/  Kinoshita 2023 Triceps surae muscle hypertrophy is greater after standing versus seated calf-raise training https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38156065/ 43:23 Shaping the content and some of the real-world application of these recommendations 50:28 The potential effect of the leg press on the calves and implementing exercise variation 1:00:23 Some final hypotheticals to close out this monster episode