Daily full body -how important is variety?

@chris1975 variety is ok, but i would stick to consistency and progressive overload... it will be hard to get stronger if you change the movements constantly.
 
@dawn16 Yeah just to clarify I moreso talking about variations of this exercise so for pushups changing hand width, incline or decline, paused reps, explosive reps etc.
 
@chris1975 That's a fantastic program, you can go far on it. I would not do it 5-6 times per week, but that's because I know my recovery would not allow that

A lot of people who babble about variety don't really understand it. If you keep everything exactly the same, day in and day out, you're going to plateau, but you don't need to make huge changes to keep your progression going:

-change your rep range

-change your volume

-change your frequency

-change your tempo

-do a different variation of that exercise

That single exercise template will take you very, very far in building strength and muscle if you just make little tweaks when you need to. If you're ever stuck, check out the strategies of powerlifters and Olympic lifters. Many of them only train the same three lifts for decades and are able to keep progressing.
 
@chris1975 Overuse injuries pains are associated with/caused by jumps in your training intensity. Say you went from doing 50 of each exercise total per week and were tired after each routine. Then you jump to 150 per week without any buildup towards the 150.

That huge jump in total muscle load is whats going to injure you, not switching up which movement you do with your push/pull/legs.

It doesn't look like your A,B example really changes the total number of set of push, pull or legs or increases total weight moved per week so you don't need to worry about over training or overuse injury here.

---

Personally I would do face pulls over rows, but thats only because I find them more enjoyable and would add some sort of rotational abdominal exercise.
 
@chris1975 The worst factors of overusage injuries are training volume and frequency. Your volume is high and your frequency too. Adding variety will slightly change the impact on your tendons, considering that they need more time to recover than our muscles. For this reason, I'll lower the reps number and increase the weight/move to an harder progression that allows me to stay in a lower range of reps such as 5-8. This way you'll at least lower the training volume, and the increased intensity will still makes your workout effective.

Additionally, is important to note that your example is far better than doing the same workout 5-6 times.
First, because you are dividing your movements by plane, where A is frontal and B is sagital (for this reason, I'll switch Nordic to B and Bulgarian to A). Training this way will lead to slightly less stress for your joints since each plane is trained only by half compared to exercising the same plane each day. Your muscles are still being hit 5-6 times a week but they are being targeted in their different functions.
Second, this alternation between planes allows to hit more muscles. For examples, Pullups and Row both target lats, but both exercises also target different muscles such as Teres Major for the Pullups and Rhomboids, Rear delts and Traps for the Rows. As you can see you are incorporating muscles in your workout that could've left behind by training with the same routine over and over again.

In conclusion, alternate between A and B regardless you're concerned of overusage injuries. It's a far more complete approach.
 
@chris1975 I'm considering doing something like this. The RR is kicking my ass , maybe because my conditioning isn't very good. I like the idea of shorter workouts and being "fresh" for each exercise. My rows are never the best quality because i do them after pullups
 

Similar threads

Back
Top