One of the questions I get asked a lot is, “How often do I need to change what I’m doing in the gym?”
My answer is, “It depends.” That’s my answer for pretty much all training related questions because, well…it does. Here are some things that affect it and rules of thumb you can go by.
1) Training Age
Training age just means how much gym experience you have. Generally, the longer you’ve been training, the more frequently you’ll need to adjust your training plan because your body will adapt faster to the stimulus. If you’ve been training consistently for more than a year or two, you probably fall into this category. In your case every 4-6 weeks is probably a good time to adjust your plan. This doesn’t mean you need to scrap your plan completely, just change your assistance work, and maybe try a different variation of your main lift. If you haven’t been training consistently for very long, you can stick with a plan longer because your body needs a chance to groove those patterns. For example, if you’ve only been lifting consistently for a few months and you squat 135lbs., keep it simple.
2) Training Consistency
This is just how often you train each week. If you’re training 3x/week or more, you’ll need to adjust more often (4-6 weeks or so). If you’re training less often than that, get more consistent before you worry about changing your training plan. Training less than 3x/week will make it difficult to see significant results unless you’re very new to training.
3) Progress
If you’re consistently adding weight to your lifts every week, and strength is your main goal (as opposed to sports performance or hypertrophy), you can choose to just wait until you stop progressing, and then adjust. If you’re stuck for more than a week or two, adjust your plan or look at what kind of stress you’re under outside of the gym.
4) Training Period
This refers to whether you’re in the general off season period, pre season period, or in season period. Each training period has its own goals and considerations. For example, in season the main goal is to maintain strength and fitness levels throughout the season, you’re usually not trying to make gains in the weight room. Also, during the in season period you want to minimize soreness, which means new exercises are not usually included. You may adjust the plan every 4-6 weeks or so for experienced athletes, but it will be exercises they’ve done before.
5) Goals
What purpose does training serve for you? Are you trying to get a strong as possible in the bench, squat, and deadlift? Are you trying to improve your sports performance? Are you just trying to get huuuuugggggeeee? Each of these affects how often you adjust your plan and the amount of exercise variety you use in your plan. If you want to be strong in the bench, squat, and deadlift you’ll be doing a lot of barbell bench, barbell back squat, and barbell deadlift. Whereas, if your goal is to improve sports performance those exercises may be your base, but you’ll have more variety because sports are about proprioception-meaning your sense of relative position, and strength and effort required for different tasks. And when you utilize greater variety in your training it helps you to improve that. Also, sports generally require a diverse skill set. You have to be able to run, jump, move laterally, and rotate in most sports so your training should reflect that.
To recap, there is no hard and fast rule about how often to change your training plan. Consider all of the above factors, but realize that unless you actually train consistently none of this really matters for your progress.