At what point should you change the exercises in your workout routine (weeks, months etc)?
What and when are two great places to start. This answer will vary greatly depending upon if you are training for an athletic event or competition, or general fitness. You can split your routing into micro, meso, and macrocycles. (macrocycle is typically and entire training year, within this mesocycle lasting several weeks to several months, and microcycles which are typically one to four weeks.) In preparing for competition you typically have a hypertrophy/endurance phase(1-6wks), basic strength phase(1-2weeks), strength/power(around 2 weeks), and an unloading week to transition to competition phase(and many times these are tiered and repeated). For general fitness as Jason mentioned above it’s all about client adaptations and level of fitness, keeping in mind the body adapts fairly quickly to imposed stresses, and of course-switch it up to make the workouts fun and motivating!
What and when are two great places to start. This answer will vary greatly depending upon if you are training for an athletic event or competition, or general fitness. You can split your routing into micro, meso, and macrocycles. (macrocycle is typically and entire training year, within this mesocycle lasting several weeks to several months, and microcycles which are typically one to four weeks.) In preparing for competition you typically have a hypertrophy/endurance phase(1-6wks), basic strength phase(1-2weeks), strength/power(around 2 weeks), and an unloading week to transition to competition phase(and many times these are tiered and repeated). For general fitness as Jason mentioned above it’s all about client adaptations and level of fitness, keeping in mind the body adapts fairly quickly to imposed stresses, and of course-switch it up to make the workouts fun and motivating!
It all depends on your clients adaptations! There are many adaptations you should consider before sequencing and progression to new exercises. An understanding of neuromuscular adaptations, physiological adaptations are important to determine WHEN to advance. Movement patterns should be looked at to determine speed, range of motion and posture before continuing to a new exercise. If any sequence in the chain is flawed when perfoming a movement pattern/exercise you should not advance until a client has gained the neuromuscular ability to memorize the pattern. (According to research this can be usually around 2-8 weeks for the onset of the neuromuscular chain to cordinate the exercises/movement patterns. Late phase adaptations are including muscle fiber hypertrophy and can be seen usually after 16 workouts according to research.) However these are not definite numbers but should be kept in mind when sequencing and progression.
It would help to know more about your split routine, how long you have been training, if you have been focusing on progressive overload, meaning, are you lifting more weight consistently or doing more sets, how long have you been doing this particular routine, etc. The body adapts eventually, which is good, but when it does, in order to keep making progress you need to offer it a new challenge. This doesn’t always have to be a complete overhaul of what you are doing. You body will tend to adapt to rep ranges quicker. The beginner may have to switch less often. If you are a bodybuilder or you have been strength training for a while, you are considered more “trained” which means you may need to make changes to your program as often as 4 weeks.
This can depend greatly on the person who is doing the exercise. If I’m training a new exerciser, someone who is not at all accustomed to physical fitness and exercise then I will spend the first few weeks with very basic movement and concentrate on making sure that they using correct form before going on to anything else. It’s critical to ensure that you aren’t putting your client at risk of injury above all else. Once they have passed that I will change the program slightly, adding a few more variables in like balance training, multi-planar movements, etc. From then on I switch a clients program up every 6-8 weeks. It doesn’t need to be big changes or an entire new routine every time, either. Just a few small changes and moving things around in the order that we do them are enough to keep the muscles from getting too smart and lazy! 🙂