3. Mix Up Both Rep Range and Exercises

Varying up your lifting routine from time to time is critical to maintaining continued muscle growth over the long term. You should look to vary up which exercises you perform, the order in which you perform them, and the rep number at which you work each muscle group.

The same motions performed month after month will eventually stop challenging your body, and growth and development will plateau. In general, you should look to rotate most of the exercises that you perform about every two to three months. If you’ve been working chest with dumbbell presses and dips for 8-12 weeks, switch to push ups with your feet on the ball, dumbbell flys, and cable crosses. After 12 weeks of following this routine, rotate back.

The order in which you perform the lifts in your routine can be varied up every week. Every motion in the gym works muscles in different ways. Changing the order in which your perform your lifts will help keep your nervous system from adapting too readily to your routine. Keeping your nervous system a bit off balance actually requires your body to recruit more muscle to perform your workout. More recruitment results in more muscle tissue getting worked, which leads to bigger gains. So if you are performing both incline bench presses and push ups for chest, switch the order in which you do them each week.

For every muscle group you work on a given day, look to vary the reps you work it at between 6-8 reps for some lifts and 10-12 reps on other lifts. A good strategy is to start any given lift with higher rep, lower weight sets, and finsih with higher weight, lower rep sets. In addition to keeping the nervous system off balance, varying up rep number ensures that you will work all of the fiber types in each muscle. Muscles are composed of several different classes of  “fast twitch” and “slow twitch” fibers. These different classes of fibers need to be worked in different rep ranges to grow. Optimal muscle growth cannot occur if both types of fibers aren’t worked thoroughly.