One of the trends in fitness is changing the exercises in your workout on a daily basis. Proponents of this style of training point to science and claim that the body will adapt to doing the same routine and needs to be “shocked” often to experience progress.

The scientific principle that these trainers use to justify constantly changing workouts is homeostasis. Homeostasis simply means that the body is constantly working to maintain stable conditions necessary for survival. A good example of how the body works to maintain homeostasis is body temperature. When we workout our core temperature rises due to the heat we generate from movement and exercise. Our body works to maintain a safe core temperature by sweating. Sweating is the way our body works to cool itself and keep our core temperature stable. The same is true when we are very cold. Instead of sweating, to reduce heat loss, our body reduces blood flow to our skin to keep our internal temperature steady.

Without challenging our bodies by using different exercises, our bodies will not change. This is true. However, our bodies take some time to adapt to an exercise. If you do a squat one day, a deadlift the next day, a clean and press the next day and a pushup the following day, you body never has a chance to adapt and get stronger. You basically are throwing random exercises out with no thought to how the body really works and hoping to improve. This is like turning at every street corner while you are driving. You will never reach your potential or your destination.

A better way to program exercise is to stick with basic exercises that work multiple muscle groups and vary the sets, repetitions, weight, and rest periods based on your goal. Give your body time to adapt and get stronger before changing your routine. This usually takes several weeks before the body reaches a plateau and stops improving.

To keep improving you need to change your workout on a regular basis using all the variables available to you. You can increase the weight, do a different version of an exercise, change the amount of rest you take between sets, increase or decrease the number of sets you do for an exercise, change the order of the exercise you do in a workout, superset exercises or do a circuit of several exercises.

 Avoid the mistake of randomly throwing exercises together in your workout routine. Use all the tools available to you to reach your goals and keep homeostasis off balance.