Have you been doing the same exercises in the same order every week for an eternity? Maybe it’s time to press the refresh button on your fitness routine.

A few years back I wrote a regular piece for a newspaper that involved a fitness assessment on a reader and giving feedback on their performance. Most of the readers were pretty hardcore exercise types who loved being fit and exercised at least 4-5 times a week. I would cross check their fitness test results to their training routines and suggest improvements.

The same key points continued to surface with nearly every person I reviewed and my guess is that plenty of people reading this blog are making the same fundamental errors with their training.

To begin with, even though most of these people were near fanatical with their training and were definitely meeting the required volume, they were still generally unhappy with how they looked. There was a pattern emerging and I discovered a very good reason for their dissatisfaction.

In general, all of them had been doing the same weekly routine for the last 6-12 months. Yes, 6-12 months, and even longer in some cases. Now I don’t care if you have the most kick arse routine in the world, if you do the same thing over and over again you can expect the same results over and over again.

It’s simple: exercise is a stress to our bodies. With effective exercise our bodies react to this stress with positive adaptation (i.e. results, gains, beautiful bodies etc). With ineffective exercise your body doesn’t need to adapt because the exercise stimulus didn’t warrant it. Specifically, if your body could easily handle your fantastic routine a month ago it will get no further benefit doing it again this month.

Mix it up people, break with routine and challenge your body anew.

By the exercise scientist himself, Damien Kelly