Should You Perform Different Exercises Every Session?

Is muscle confusion real?

All illustrations by the author.

When it comes to maximizing muscle growth, many different ideas are put forth.

One of these is the idea of muscle confusion.

This idea suggests that performing different exercises every session ensures you are consistently exposing your body to a new stimulus. Doing so supposedly drives adaptations most optimally.

In other words, your muscles stay ‘confused’ from a variety of exercises and are forced to adapt each time.

Note, performing different exercises for a muscle group throughout the week, but performing this every week would be still be considered a fixed exercise selection regime. Performing different exercises for a muscle group every session, while re-visiting the same exercises infrequently is what this article is based on.

But is this true? Is muscle confusion real?

To get straight to the answer, no, the evidence suggests there is no advantage to performing different exercises every session (Baz-Valle et al. 2019).

In fact, there are reasons suggesting that performing different exercises every session, in some cases, could be detrimental.

In this article, we’ll discuss these reasons. Additionally, we’ll also explore where performing different exercises every session may be acceptable.

Problems With Constant Exercise Rotation