How Long Should You Follow a Workout Plan Before Changing It?

If you’re a fitness junkie and read different health magazines and articles to get the best knowledge, you must have come across various articles regarding changing your workout routine. Changing your routine now and then is crucial. Normally, people get bored of doing the same thing again and again, so bringing variation to your habits can make your life more interesting and lively. That is why you should keep changing your workout routines.

Tons of articles shed light on the importance of continuously bringing variations in your exercise routine, but they fail to answer how often should you change your workouts. Should you do different exercises regularly or should you keep changing them every week? Should you change your workout entirely or should you make slight amendments to it? And the most important question that is hardly ever answered is, if your current workout is continuously bringing positive changes to your body and overall health, should you still change your workout routine?

If you, too, are baffled about when to change your workout and what to change in it, here are all the necessary details that you need to know.

When Should You Change Your Workout Plan?

According to most experts and gym trainers, you should stick to your program for at least three weeks. It doesn’t mean that you should change your exercise plan right after that. It is just the given shortest period for doing any program. The reason behind this is that if you keep changing your plan entirely almost every day, you won’t leave sufficient time for your body to get used to the changes.

A person must give his or her body adequate time to endure the necessary structural changes, so if the plan gets changed too soon, the muscles and other parts won’t get enough time to adapt to make steady progress. Conversely, if you keep avoiding change in your workout and continue following the same plan for an extended period, it will lead to a never-ending plateau.

Nevertheless, as I’ve mentioned before, the adaptive phase doesn’t have to be for exactly three weeks. It depends on the nature of the exercises you’re engaged in and your fitness level. Beginners take a longer time to adapt, so they may stick to one program for 3 to 8 weeks, depending on their progress. In the same way, more seasoned and experienced exercisers can change their workout plan in as little as 3 to 4 weeks.

Another significant thing to remember is that changes should be made gradually and not at once. Just change a few of the exercises you think aren’t helping you enough and keep the ones you think are beneficial. You can even change the entire plan, but do remember to ask your gym trainer or some expert before doing so.

Now, let’s move toward the most important question: should you still change your plan after three to four weeks, even if your current workout is bringing positive results? The answer is: not really.

Suppose you do your upper body exercises on Monday, lower body workouts on Tuesday, take a break on Wednesday, again do upper body exercises on Thursday, workouts for the lower body on Friday, and rest on the weekends.Now once you’ve maintained this routine for at least three weeks, start noticing the progress. If you’re finding positive changes in your body, don’t bother changing your exercise program. However, if the growth stops, feel free to adopt a new program or start doing a few novel exercises.

You can also change your exercises if you start getting bored with the ones you’re doing. This condition can only make you uninterested in doing exercises, so before the boredom strikes, change your plan.

 

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