How frequently to change up lifting routine

nossmf

I've been lifting for over 12 years now, and over that span have tried a large variety of lifts for each body part. When I was younger and had the time, I'd try to incorporate EVERYTHING into my workouts, which could easily result in 2-hr long sessions.

These days I limit myself to 45-60 minutes per session, so I've had to cut way back on the number of exercises I do. For the past year I've followed a PPL split (push-pull-legs), changing up my exercise selection every 3 months or so.

But I find I miss doing certain lifts, so have been looking at a large scale shift in how I do things. Due to time limitations imposed by work/life, I will keep my sessions shorter at 45-60 minutes, as well as keep the PPL rotation. However, rather than doing the same lifts every week, I'm thinking of setting up four workouts of each type, labelling them A-B-C-D, and rotating each week. As in next week do Push A, Pull A, Legs A, then the following week do the B version of each, and so on. Some key exercises (bench, squat, deadlift) will remain consistent from week to week, others will be subject to change.

Benefits of proposed ABCD rotation:

• Get to re-experience ALL my favorite lifts on a (semi) regular basis
• Muscle adaptation to specific exercises reduced, as I will be attacking my pecs (for example) from a variety of angles, weights and rep ranges
• Variety is the spice of life

Benefits of maintaining a 3-month rotation:

• Easier to track progress from one week to the next
• Improved proficiency on specific exercises due to repetition

Any opinions? I'm not a certified anything, just trying to leverage a decade-plus of lifting, along with an aging body and changing life requirements, into something sustainable going forward.

Chieflrg

My opinion is it is very extremely suboptimal to change lifts every week. The idea is to develop an adaptation(as you touched on) which you can't do with only one exposure every now and again. Example Crossfit is not considered a strength building programming because of the randomness. In fact all the elite athletes that compete and win train a more conventional or typical strength style in the actual gym and practice the skills of crossfit with higher frequency as nearing the games. I laugh as I see them or some trainers sneak into my gym low key to hit the big lifts for strength.

I would rather see you dissect your responses to exposures and then choose your exercise selection from there.

slade51

I do a similar routine using push-pull-legs-rest in an A/B sequence. The rest days are a 1-1.5 hr run or bike ride.
The exercises aren’t completely different though, more like switching between dumbbell & barbell. Every 8-12 weeks, I take a week off, then switch stuff around. I’ve only been back to lifting for 2 years. I wonder if it might be better to keep the lifts the same but switch between heavy weights/less reps and light weight/more reps for the A&B.

I’m no expert either, so I’d defer to someone like @Chieflrg who knows what he’s talking about.

nossmf

For what it's worth, I already do an every-other-week routine change. For example:

Push A
BB Bench 5x5
DB Bench 3x10

Push B
DB Bench 5x5
BB Bench 3x10

ninerbuff

What many don't understand is that you can "change" your routine by just varying reps, sets, and/or resistance used, rest time, and pace without having to change any of the exercises. Some of these new PT's out there are listening to too much jargon spread on fitness magazines and really low educated trainers.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

nossmf

I'm not trying to alter things based upon the advice of a PT or a magazine. I'm simply looking for ways to incorporate more of the exercises I've come to enjoy over the years. Since longer workouts is not an option, and I'd prefer to not do a single set of each, I figured the next method of getting a wider variety of exercises was to use them in different workouts on different days, or weeks as the case may be. But perhaps I just need to keep with my current method of changing up every 3 months, so over the course of a year I get to see all the oldies but goodies, rather than over the course of a few weeks.