[bargainbin]

>1. Consistency >5. Vary your workout

The muscle "shock" broscience has been disproven many times:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35438660/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349502442_Does_Vary...

[lm28469]

> The muscle "shock" broscience has been disproven many times:

Variety isn't to shock or confuse the body, it's just to make sure you actually hit all the muscles in as many ways possible. Take your average push/pull gym rat to a yoga class or a climbing wall and they'll be more sore the next day than they've ever been before, because they'll activate muscles they didn't even know they had.

[oarfish]

Yes, because the stimulus is novel if youve never done yoga before (e.g. a bunch of isometrics). That is not an indication of it being useful exercise for the outcomes of interest.

[MegaDeKay]

Indeed. It is really just tension x time under tension within a sensible rep range (probably around 5 - 30 reps or so). Menno on Youtube has a bunch of videos on this, the link below being the latest one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmOBmTZARq8

Basically work the muscle harder and get more jacked. It isn't that hard. Full body workouts are also great for this reason: you can hit a muscle more times per week and be fresher when you hit that muscle, so both the tension and time under tension can be higher vs a body part split.

[CuriouslyC]

Time under tension is an imperfect measure, it's just less bad than other measures we could use. Sort of like lines of code in software engineering. Given that, saying it's "just TUT" is misleading.

It could turn out to be that the brain is coordinating hypertrophic biochemical cascades in muscles, and TUT is just a fairly reliable method for inducing this.

I was a competitive powerlifter and trained around pro bodybuilders for years, and in my experience, the only commonality between them was the intense all consuming drive to be absolutely monstrous (and they ate a lot). Some would train for 2 hours a day, some would train for 45 minutes 3x a week, some would use high volume in the 50-70% range and others would focus on 70-85%, some were explosive some were slow and steady, really it was all over the map.

[jeltz]

The reason for varying your workout I have heard is to avoid injury, not to be stronger. Of course it may turn out that is false too.

[gazpacho]

This is what I've found after 15 years of working out and athletics. Think of it this way: doing the same thing over and over again is what is proven to lead to workplace injuries. Doing the same thing over and over again in the gym is no different.

I like to do a weight training as the consistent foundation, with a mix of heavy lifts, calisthenics, volume (bodybuilding) training and mobility training. Add in some yoga, rock climbing, biking, soccer. I feel this sort of mix balances movements out which helps with injury prevention and also makes sure you always have something active to do that you enjoy, which is definitely #1.

[jraines]

It doesn’t really affect hypertrophy but it matters because imbalances will get you weird injuries and/or mobility restrictions in the long term.

[oarfish]

Not true, no one is symmetrical or fully balanced in strength. outside of extreme cases, so called imbalances arent a problem on a population level, at least as far as we know today.