Here’s the scene: we’ve found the courage to start a scary new exercise practice which we are doing with FREQUENCY, and we have prudently added INTENSITY… now what? Maybe it started off great, but now the results we wanted aren’t resulting anymore. Maybe I’ve been going for my morning run 5x per week, HARD, but I’ve nonetheless plateaued. Maybe I took up bodybuilding or started doing yoga throughout the week, but I still get winded going up the stairs.
The next lever we’ll want to pull to really accelerate our return on effort and reach our goals faster is variety. This variety (often referred to as “variance”) is achieved by deliberately mixing things up instead of sticking to the same routine.
who benefits from variety? does it help all athletes equally?
Before we continue, let’s address a quick caveat: if you’re training to be a specialist, variety plays a smaller role. You should spend the majority of your training doing the thing you want to be absolutely dominant at. Maybe some cross-training, but that will primarily be for injury prevention. Focused training on your sport is critical to your success.
But most of us are training for the nebulous idea of “fitness,” or general physical preparedness. The mission statement of ActiveVT refers to it as “living a longer, more active life.” This post assumes that the audience’s goals are to be overall fit, have decent cardiorespiratory capacity, be able to balance on one foot to tie their shoes, hoist a bag into the overhead compartment, stack their own wood for winter, carry a child or a grandchild for 10 minutes (or an hour), etc. Eventually even athletic specialists will find a competitive season winding down, or performance ambitions may fade, and at some point we all want to be a bit more fit overall. The devoted weightlifters among us may realize, “What if I’m in a pickle that I can’t solve by picking up something heavy?” The yogis may realize they might not be able to stretch and balance their way out of most “oh shit” situations, and the runners may consider… “What if the next problem I encounter in life is not one I can run from?” To prepare for an unknown variety of challenges, use a variety of training approaches.
What does adding variety actually look like?
May all runners lift more, and may all lifters run more. May all downhill skiers learn to hike in the summer, and all mountain bikers dabble in yoga. With cross-disciplinary training we may delay excellence in any one sport, with the wonderful result of becoming quite capable in many others. What does variety actually look like? It looks like mixing movements, loads, reps, and timing. Start simple — turn your 5-mile run into a 3-mile run with 30 squats and 10 push-ups every half mile. Turn the 4 minutes of rest between heavy 5×5 deadlift sets into 500-meter rowing pieces. Eventually you’ll feel comfortable adding more elements of variety, challenging yourself in new ways that are both effective and exciting.
But what happens when you add variety? Quite simply, you get better at everything.
how will i know variety is working if i’m constantly changing things?
After 8 years of coaching people of all shapes, sizes, and athletic dispositions, I have grown to love a springtime phenomenon: when it comes time for our start-of-season “timed mile” (how quickly can you run 5,280 feet), NON-runners frequently crush their own personal records… after MONTHS OF NOT RUNNING! WOW! As enthusiastically as I celebrate their achievements, I’m not actually surprised by it. Why? Because these people’s fitness has been so dramatically advanced over the winter by frequently training with intensity for months: box jumps, power snatches, double-unders, weighted lunges, rowing intervals, deadlifts, toes-to-bar, Turkish get-ups, and so much more. All of those collectively have been pushing the needle of fitness forward; their body couldn’t help but crush the simple running test.
As you continue to show up for yourself in the gym or on the trails or wherever you pursue your fitness, consider the game-changing role that variety plays. If you’re doing the same thing every day and it’s easy, make it harder. Once you’ve made it harder, change it up. As Greg Glassman’s infamous “World-Class Fitness in 100 Words” says: “Five or six days per week, mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy.”
Now that we’ve added frequency, intensity, and variety to the equation, exercise can still seem quite daunting. Maybe you still need help, you need to learn some moves, you need somebody to write the daily formula for variety and help turn your intensity dial. At ActiveVT we help people of all ages, sizes, experience levels, and confidence levels reach their goals. If you’re ready to make some amazing changes — frequently, intensely, and with variety — reach out and schedule a No Sweat Intro so we can help you.
