Israetel: How Often Should You Use Exercise Variation?

[silveraw]

I don't know man, not sure we can compare adding 1lb a week to your dumbell curl to a systemically effective lift like AA snatching. I'll concede both similar body mechanics to improve though.

haha let me rephrase.

On the continum of Minimum effective dose for strength gain and Maximal recoverable volume for gains, the group identifying as "minimalist" and the group they identify as "maximalists" are pretty much right next to each other.

 

[Adachi]

haha let me rephrase.

On the continum of Minimum effective dose for strength gain and Maximal recoverable volume for gains, the group identifying as "minimalist" and the group they identify as "maximalists" are pretty much right next to each other.

In my experience , for me, this is very roughly true.
I'm pressing for hypertrophy now. And I've worked towards increasing pure strength before.

In general I'm finding a huge difference in the training effect of sets of 5 and 10, vs sets of 15 and 20. But the overall volume is terribly similar.

I get the feeling that while recovery ability can be increased by some margin, it seems to be very easily outstripped by my ability to increase recovery demands.

Either way, admittedly, I'm still floating around similar amounts of time and tonnage . Between 1 and 3 hours a week. Handling between 100 and 300 reps with the 32 and/ or 40kg bell. But the deck chairs are rearranged a bit to drive either myofibril development or sarcoplasmic development.

I'd bet we all have a fenced in region of recoverability and adaptability to play within.
Whatever that is.

 

[bluejeff]

I got carried away. Here's some thoughts, and an article, for anyone interested in these ideas.

Masters/experts in a sport, skills, whatever show an ability to complete tasks via a wider range of movement options. Practicing varying movements allows for expression of strength and control in a wider range of movement tasks. Incorporating different variations of movement patterns is a good way to accomplish this.

Searching for articles and studies on movement variability will turn up more, but here is a pretty good article.

Movement Variability: Should we eliminate it, or embrace it? | Barbell Medicine

Our attempts to understand and explain complex systems commonly involve reductionist analysis, whereby a system is broken down into its component parts for easier understanding. Theoretically, after analyzing and understanding each of the individual components of the system, we can “add” these...

www.barbellmedicine.com

Bold by me:

"Motor variability is also necessary for changing coordination of movement in complex and variable environments, and likely offers benefits by distributing tissue loads more broadly across the tissues. The latter of these ideas has led to a “Variability-Overuse-Injury Hypothesis” based on a growing evidence base suggesting an association between decreased movement variability and injury, as well as evidence of a decrease in movement variability as task demands and loading increase. Nordin 2019"

Regarding "complex and variable environments," my mind immediately goes to ballistics, whether of the Olympic or kettlebell variety. The application to running sports should be apparent.

"we have findings that suggest:

1. Movement variability appears to be beneficial in a number of ways (including, but potentially not limited to, improving motor learning and mitigating injury risk)
2. There is significant inter-individual variability in the execution of motor tasks (i.e., there is no single generalizable “optimal” motor strategy for all individuals to accomplish a given task)
3. There is significant intra-individual variability in the execution of motor tasks, as evidenced by elite performers being unable to identically reproduce their own motor patterns across multiple trials of the same task."

So essentially, there is evidence out there that you CANNOT avoid movement variation, even when you are trying your hardest to make every rep the same. I think people might think that once you learn a movement, it's like running a computer program where things happen the exact same way every time. But the nervous system doesn't work like that. From what I heave learned, while it's true you have dedicated pathways for different things, myelination of nerves, etc, they are more like a well-trodden path. It's a path because you walk the same way to and from point A ad B a lot. You still have to walk the path each time though. This means that each time you do an overhead press or whatever, your body is still trying to "figure out" how to do it, at some lower level. But the more you do it, the more particular motor units get myelinated, the quicker and more effectively those nerves fire, etc. Those become the "path of least resistance," and so the task feels easier to coordinate. But what about if you trip off the path and have to take a short detour? How well can you get back on the path? What if the terrain off the path is drastically different than on the path?

This is where training different variations helps. It is teaching your body to navigate "different terrain." It gives ability to the body to "self-organize," allowing you to execute the task in a controlled way. I think of this like this: The more ways you have to get from point A to B, the more effectively and consistently you will arrive there. The more types of the basic movement patterns you do, the more movement options you will have to "stay on the path."

This, to me, means that it is movement variability that allows you to more effectively "make every rep look the same," not that movement variability makes your reps look different.

All this is just my way of saying that you should incorporate varying movements into your training. Despite the anecdotes that the best athletes practice specific things for decades, they, as @watchnerd pointed out, ALSO do a lot of other things. More broadly speaking, being able to express strength in a wider range of tasks and positions will make you a more resilient human as well.

 

[Ben Strong]

From what I heave learned, while it's true you have dedicated pathways for different things, myelination of nerves, etc, they are more like a well-trodden path. It's a path because you walk the same way to and from point A ad B a lot. You still have to walk the path each time though. This means that each time you do an overhead press or whatever, your body is still trying to "figure out" how to do it, at some lower level. But the more you do it, the more particular motor units get myelinated, the quicker and more effectively those nerves fire, etc. Those become the "path of least resistance," and so the task feels easier to coordinate. But what about if you trip off the path and have to take a short detour? How well can you get back on the path? What if the terrain off the path is drastically different than on the path?

I think this has a lot to do with it. To continue using bluejeff's analogy above, I have always thought about movement variability as taking a bulldozer and widening the path into a highway.

For example the more planes of motion that you are comfortable loading a squat in (FSQ, Back Squat, Zecher, lunges, Cossack, etc) the easier it is to navigate back to the lane that you were driving in if you happen to swerve off course.

 

[watchnerd]

For example the more planes of motion that you are comfortable loading a squat in (FSQ, Back Squat, Zecher, lunges, Cossack, etc) the easier it is to navigate back to the lane that you were driving in if you happen to swerve off course.

I just watched a video from Bioneer where he basically says the same thing about having "wiggle room" for real life situations:

 

[watchnerd]

lunges, Cossack, etc) the easier it is to navigate back to the lane that you were driving in if you happen to swerve off course.

Real world example:

3x10 (each leg) *bodyweight* lateral lunges last Saturday gave me pretty serious DOMS on Sunday.

Vastus lateralis (surprisingly), adductor and abductors (expected) all were wrecked.

So clearly I haven't been doing enough work in the frontal plane.

 

[North Coast Miller]

Re variation of movement, it pays to recognize those situations in life when you realize you're awkward, unable to get underneath, behind, above some mechanical/physical challenge. These moments of awareness can help guide future exercise selection.