Stop Being A Program-Hopper.

Reading Time: 10 minutes

Here’s an interesting truth:

If you go to the gym, you are in a very small minority of individuals on the planet.

(it is estimated 2.4% of the entire world’s population attend gyms)

If you go to the gym AND follow a program… consider yourself an elitist in fitness.

For those who are following a program (or if you have ever followed one), you will understand the benefits it can bring you in creating a structure and organizing the chaos of your workouts, which in many cases can become sporadic and jumbled.

It can feel exciting getting first started on a new training plan.

That initial excitement can be enough to motivate you for a period of several weeks or even months. But, after a period of time, the novelty may soon begin to wear off and you might find that your level of interest wanes.

That exhilarating feeling of jumping from your programmed bench press sets into a tricep extension AMRAP (as many reps as possible) set starts to get more monotone and you long for the variety and spontaneity of something fresh to keep you stimulated in both the mental and physical-sense.

Often, it’s at this point when people will make a leap to another routine, to a completely different style of training altogether, or otherwise give-in to the yearning for variety to fill the void of new-ness as previously experienced at the start.

Be very f*cking cautious doing this.

Because, what I’ve learned coaching and through years of lifting weights is that doing the same things and gradually improving over time – that’s the real secret sauce.

A short attention span will be the end of you when it comes to actually making real and lasting results, beyond just the 5lb dip on the scale after a 30-day diet/challenge or a once-in-a-blue-moon bench press PR on a random “good” workout day.

Rather than sticking to a program for 8-12 weeks, becoming mildly disinterested, and pivoting to some new workout you saw your favorite Instagram bodybuilder doing…

You need to find something and (seriously) stick to it.

Here’s something that I once told an online coaching cliens:

“Your training and nutrition plan shouldn’t be what brings you excitement, getting the results from sticking to your plan should be what excites you.”

Within that framework, understand also that while the exercises and overall plan should remain largely the same… you can adjust and adapt the smaller details to keep things feeling relatively fresh and avoid redundancy along the way.

Some examples of this?

• Changing the exercise order within your workouts
• Adding supersets/circuits or changing the variation for each exercise (for instance, switching from using a barbell to a trap-bar when performing deadlifts)
• Modifying aspects of the exercise such as sets/reps, tempo, and rest period length

These can all lead to a workout that is similar in structure, keeps you progressing, but is unique enough to stimulate your urge for doing something spontaneous and exciting.

Listen – please, stop constantly hopping programs.

You’ll make much better progress when you stick to a set structure, for as long as it continues to work and produce outcomes that move you in a net positive direction.

If it’s not broken, why are you trying to fix it?

Need a structured program? I’ve created Kettle-Power-Building as a 4-day split to address gaining strength, building muscle, and moving better with kettlebells.

I hope that after reading through this article (thanks for getting this far), whatever you choose to follow, you see it through for just a little while longer now.

Keep putting those reps in.