John Meadows changing exercises vs. keeping the same exercises through a block/prgram

[snuklov]

My knowledge of John Meadows' approach to training is that he often would change exercises throughout a program. This differs to the approach of holding an exercise constant throughout a program.

Obviously if the exercises for a given muscle a changing frequently then progress can be measured for that exercise but seeing an increase or decrease in performance.

However, are there actually any pitfalls to this approach given ultimately you are still stimulating the same muscle?

e.g week 1 uses bench press for a chest exercise, next week this is removed and it is incline dumbbell press.

 

[hawkmoon]

The widespread belief that you must constantly cycle movements to stimulate muscle growth is an illusion IMHO. Thanks Joe Weider.

When you perform a specific exercise consistently, your central nervous system optimizes its motor unit recruitment, inter-muscular coordination, and technical leverage. Eventually, you maximize your neurological efficiency on that movement.
At this peak, further progression slows down because it relies strictly on increasing actual tissue or improving recovery and variables like volume or external factors (gear/food).

Advocates of frequent exercise rotation suggest switching movements to break through this plateau. In reality, this swaps a fully optimized movement, where execution is perfected and directed entirely at the target tissue, for a less efficient one.

Even advanced guys with decades of experience suffer from motor pattern decay; step away from a primary lift for several months, and the neurological skill erodes, making you functionally 'weaker' when you return.
Reintroducing that exercise after a long layoff triggers a phase of rapid, linear strength gains. This isn't accelerated muscle growth, it is just the rapid restoration of your underlying efficiency.
Rotating exercises to bypass a plateau merely trades targeted mechanical tension for a temporary motor re-learning curve.

Exercise rotation is far more useful for psychological novelty and joint longevity than for forcing new physical adaptation.
If you want variety, or want to work around irritation or injury that's adifferent matter.

 

[AllOkJumpmaster]

The widespread belief that you must constantly cycle movements to stimulate muscle growth is an illusion IMHO. Thanks Joe Weider.

When you perform a specific exercise consistently, your central nervous system optimizes its motor unit recruitment, inter-muscular coordination, and technical leverage. Eventually, you maximize your neurological efficiency on that movement.
At this peak, further progression slows down because it relies strictly on increasing actual tissue or improving recovery and variables like volume or external factors (gear/food).

Advocates of frequent exercise rotation suggest switching movements to break through this plateau. In reality, this swaps a fully optimized movement, where execution is perfected and directed entirely at the target tissue, for a less efficient one.

Even advanced guys with decades of experience suffer from motor pattern decay; step away from a primary lift for several months, and the neurological skill erodes, making you functionally 'weaker' when you return.
Reintroducing that exercise after a long layoff triggers a phase of rapid, linear strength gains. This isn't accelerated muscle growth, it is just the rapid restoration of your underlying efficiency.
Rotating exercises to bypass a plateau merely trades targeted mechanical tension for a temporary motor re-learning curve.

Exercise rotation is far more useful for psychological novelty and joint longevity than for forcing new physical adaptation.
If you want variety, or want to work around irritation or injury that's adifferent matter.

Damn man, lol, I was writing out a whole ass reply to him, then I read what you said and it was so well articulated, I just said "SpongeBob I'm out meme" lol

That said, the only thing I would add is that by rotating exercises for a muscle group every session, it makes it very difficult to track progress. It doesn't mean you have to do the exact same exercises militantly for an entire block, but if you have a structure to how you rotate them, you can at least track if you are improving in those exercises.

In the context of the Mountain Dog programs, I would need to know which program it is, so I can review the program and see the full layout.

Many of John's programs were body part specific, or had other goals as the priority, so if the exercise is rotating it, doesn't necessarily mean his entire philosophy was based on constantly rotating exercises.

 

[AllOkJumpmaster]

Damn man, lol, I was writing out a whole ass reply to him, then I read what you said and it was so well articulated, I just said "SpongeBob I'm out meme" lol

That said, the only thing I would add is that by rotating exercises for a muscle group every session, it makes it very difficult to track progress. It doesn't mean you have to do the exact same exercises militantly for an entire block, but if you have a structure to how you rotate them, you can at least track if you are improving in those exercises.

In the context of the Mountain Dog programs, I would need to know which program it is, so I can review the program and see the full layout.

Many of John's programs were body part specific, or had other goals as the priority, so if the exercise is rotating it, doesn't necessarily mean his entire philosophy was based on constantly rotating exercises.

it was too late to edit, but for clarification, I own all of John's programs, so when I say review it, I mean review the copy I own, not asking you to provide the program. Every program he wrote has a specific goal as the priority, so depending on what it is, there may be a reason he has a rotating exercise(s) in play

 

[snuklov]

it was too late to edit, but for clarification, I own all of John's programs, so when I say review it, I mean review the copy I own, not asking you to provide the program. Every program he wrote has a specific goal as the priority, so depending on what it is, there may be a reason he has a rotating exercise(s) in play

Thanks for replying. I primarily made this comment in reference to CDII. In saying that I have seen a small number of his other programs. To be fair I do know he holds some exercises constant for short periods....but overall I have the mindset of hold an exercise so you can progress on it.

One approach I was suggested to buy one of his 6 week programs a s treat each week as its own block, so maybe run week 1 for 6 weeks, deload then run week 2 for 6 weeks and so forth.

 

[hawkmoon]

Damn man, lol, I was writing out a whole ass reply to him, then I read what you said and it was so well articulated, I just said "SpongeBob I'm out meme" lol

That said, the only thing I would add is that by rotating exercises for a muscle group every session, it makes it very difficult to track progress. It doesn't mean you have to do the exact same exercises militantly for an entire block, but if you have a structure to how you rotate them, you can at least track if you are improving in those exercises.

In the context of the Mountain Dog programs, I would need to know which program it is, so I can review the program and see the full layout.

Many of John's programs were body part specific, or had other goals as the priority, so if the exercise is rotating it, doesn't necessarily mean his entire philosophy was based on constantly rotating exercises.

I imagine John also intentionally created programs to keep people engaged and interested in their workouts.
Some people cannot slog on for years with the same exercises, they'd be quite bored.

 

[Cerberus777]

I get switch between exercises but its still repeated in the program. Using multiple angles might build muscle differently. It dosnt keep overuse down. Removing it if you stagnate makes sence. Injury csn happen here.

 

[specter]

When i worked with John for a couple years we did it like this, he would send me a new program i would try it for 2-3 weeks then report back, what worked, what didnt, what gave me pain or was hard to execute safely like barbell shoulderpress i just couldnt execute that safely so we shifted to strict standing dumbell press, so we adjusted and rolled with it for 12 weeks and then re adjusted with new exercises and new micro adjustments and rolled on.

 

[massephase]

I have noticed one benefit from switching exercises regularly - it helps me to keep approaching training with a focus on stimulating the muscle, vs trying to get stronger in a movement, which has often led to ego lifting for me after a while.

But if you have the discipline not to let yourself do that, that's a moot point.

 

[FK86]

The widespread belief that you must constantly cycle movements to stimulate muscle growth is an illusion IMHO. Thanks Joe Weider.

When you perform a specific exercise consistently, your central nervous system optimizes its motor unit recruitment, inter-muscular coordination, and technical leverage. Eventually, you maximize your neurological efficiency on that movement.
At this peak, further progression slows down because it relies strictly on increasing actual tissue or improving recovery and variables like volume or external factors (gear/food).

Advocates of frequent exercise rotation suggest switching movements to break through this plateau. In reality, this swaps a fully optimized movement, where execution is perfected and directed entirely at the target tissue, for a less efficient one.

Even advanced guys with decades of experience suffer from motor pattern decay; step away from a primary lift for several months, and the neurological skill erodes, making you functionally 'weaker' when you return.
Reintroducing that exercise after a long layoff triggers a phase of rapid, linear strength gains. This isn't accelerated muscle growth, it is just the rapid restoration of your underlying efficiency.
Rotating exercises to bypass a plateau merely trades targeted mechanical tension for a temporary motor re-learning curve.

Exercise rotation is far more useful for psychological novelty and joint longevity than for forcing new physical adaptation.
If you want variety, or want to work around irritation or injury that's adifferent matter.

I'm going to slightly disagree. Having two different variations of each session has been one of the best factors in my training. Training muscle groups every 4-6 days, but repeating the same exercises only every 10-12 days has allowed for much more consistent progress. Now, randomly changing exercises with no plan all the time is something I do not agree with.

I remember reading Eddie Hall was deadlifting every 7 days and was stuck at a plateau for the longest time. He switched to every 10 days or something and was able to get past it. I think the takeaway is that muscles and the CNS don't recover at the same rate. I first read about exercise rotation from Westside/Russian Conjugate and DC training.

I know you're a DC-style advocate, but mentioned you tailored it to suit your needs. Did you drop the exercise rotation?

 

[qbkilla]

I'm going to slightly disagree. Having two different variations of each session has been one of the best factors in my training. Training muscle groups every 4-6 days, but repeating the same exercises only every 10-12 days has allowed for much more consistent progress. Now, randomly changing exercises with no plan all the time is something I do not agree with.

I remember reading Eddie Hall was deadlifting every 7 days and was stuck at a plateau for the longest time. He switched to every 10 days or something and was able to get past it. I think the takeaway is that muscles and the CNS don't recover at the same rate. I first read about exercise rotation from Westside/Russian Conjugate and DC training.

I know you're a DC-style advocate, but mentioned you tailored it to suit your needs. Did you drop the exercise rotation?

I see both of your points and don't they necessarily contradict each other, it's more a question of goals and how to structure things.

Same exercise forever, you get past the neural adaptation and future progress is likely muscle gain.

But at the same time, if the goal is to milk progress as long as possible, less frequent practice means longer time for neural adaptation to fully happen, therefore a longer period to progress in theory.

Also if adding 5 lbs each time, 5 lbs a week on say an oh press you will hit the wall fast. But if it's DC training, and your rotating db press with barbell oh press, your now adding 5lbs every other week to a movement, so you can likely keep progress going for more total weeks before you hit the wall..and you will be progressing on 2 exercises vs 1

 

[hawkmoon]

I'm going to slightly disagree. Having two different variations of each session has been one of the best factors in my training. Training muscle groups every 4-6 days, but repeating the same exercises only every 10-12 days has allowed for much more consistent progress. Now, randomly changing exercises with no plan all the time is something I do not agree with.

I remember reading Eddie Hall was deadlifting every 7 days and was stuck at a plateau for the longest time. He switched to every 10 days or something and was able to get past it. I think the takeaway is that muscles and the CNS don't recover at the same rate. I first read about exercise rotation from Westside/Russian Conjugate and DC training.

I know you're a DC-style advocate, but mentioned you tailored it to suit your needs. Did you drop the exercise rotation?

If it works for you, then something in that paradigm is working for you and I can't deny that at face value.

I will say just for the sake of putting it out there that strength training methodology and hypertrophy do not necessarily align.

One of my DC modifications is indeed the deletion of exercise rotation. That and failure at higher reps (though Dante advocates this for older athletes) as well as always having a day in between workouts are probably my most significant changes.

 

[Splitzz]

Only change exercises anymore if progress stalls or I lose the connection with what muscle I’m trying to work otherwise they remain the same.

 

[Shelby]

I imagine John also intentionally created programs to keep people engaged and interested in their workouts.
Some people cannot slog on for years with the same exercises, they'd be quite bored.

@b-boy and I were (very fortunately) some of the first to initially work with John on training (Brad before me, then I saw his gains and followed suit)
This was quite a while before John Meadows was well known or had social media or a website or anything like that (roughly 2010ish)
John would just write up what HE did for his workouts the past week, and send those to us.
It was pretty much something new every week / every workout. Changing exercises, sets / reps, etc.
It was pretty much the same split all the time though (and everything was pretty much trained just once a week)
I made some of the best gains of my bodybuilding career using his style, but there were numerous other factors at play as well, so who knows what was and wasn't responsible for what.
His training methods changed a lot as he got more popular, I kind of stopped following it all at a certain point
So maybe by then he was changing stuff tto keep people more interested, at least to a certain extent.

 

[Flex500]

I got to know John better after his retirement as we went to the same gym in columbus (well he went to many gyms, but we crossed over at one). Later in his years he seemed to settle more on changing a lot but having anchor exercices that you progress on for a given amount of time. I think in his mind that blended both words. So maybe squats would be second exercises every leg workout and you maniacially progress on that, but a lot of the other exercises, rep ranges, etc change. I think you see a lot of this method in his programs as well from collosus to many others.

 

[d4ve]

The widespread belief that you must constantly cycle movements to stimulate muscle growth is an illusion IMHO. Thanks Joe Weider.

When you perform a specific exercise consistently, your central nervous system optimizes its motor unit recruitment, inter-muscular coordination, and technical leverage. Eventually, you maximize your neurological efficiency on that movement.
At this peak, further progression slows down because it relies strictly on increasing actual tissue or improving recovery and variables like volume or external factors (gear/food).

Advocates of frequent exercise rotation suggest switching movements to break through this plateau. In reality, this swaps a fully optimized movement, where execution is perfected and directed entirely at the target tissue, for a less efficient one.

Even advanced guys with decades of experience suffer from motor pattern decay; step away from a primary lift for several months, and the neurological skill erodes, making you functionally 'weaker' when you return.
Reintroducing that exercise after a long layoff triggers a phase of rapid, linear strength gains. This isn't accelerated muscle growth, it is just the rapid restoration of your underlying efficiency.
Rotating exercises to bypass a plateau merely trades targeted mechanical tension for a temporary motor re-learning curve.

Exercise rotation is far more useful for psychological novelty and joint longevity than for forcing new physical adaptation.
If you want variety, or want to work around irritation or injury that's adifferent matter.

I agree, but I often question the degree to which this is really true for someone with decades of lifting experience. If you've accumulated a lot of skill at getting muscle to fire in a basic "type" of movement pattern, how much does it really matter when you swap from one to another?

Example - You get really good at firing your lat in a one-arm machine row. You want to swap to a different one-arm machine row, for whatever reason...or a cable row, etc. Are the first few sessions on that "new" variation meaningfully less stimulative, in terms of hypertrophy?

I don't know for sure. It's almost a moot point for me, anyway, since I'm such a creature of habit that I'm going to repeat sessions week to week whether I think it's "optimal" or not. But I like to think that if I have to swap because my usual piece is taken, out of order, not available out of town, whatever - I'm still getting like 90+% of the stimulus I usually get.

 

[d4ve]

@b-boy and I were (very fortunately) some of the first to initially work with John on training (Brad before me, then I saw his gains and followed suit)
This was quite a while before John Meadows was well known or had social media or a website or anything like that (roughly 2010ish)
John would just write up what HE did for his workouts the past week, and send those to us.
It was pretty much something new every week / every workout. Changing exercises, sets / reps, etc.
It was pretty much the same split all the time though (and everything was pretty much trained just once a week)
I made some of the best gains of my bodybuilding career using his style, but there were numerous other factors at play as well, so who knows what was and wasn't responsible for what.
His training methods changed a lot as he got more popular, I kind of stopped following it all at a certain point
So maybe by then he was changing stuff tto keep people more interested, at least to a certain extent.

Just curious, at this point was the split the well-known Meadows 4-day (chest / shoulders, back, arms, legs)?

 

[Shelby]

Just curious, at this point was the split the well-known Meadows 4-day (chest / shoulders, back, arms, legs)?

Yes. I always liked training 4 days a week, felt best with 3 rest days and going pretty nuts on the 4 training days.

 

[Sectør]

I generally try to keep my excersises consistent for 4-6 weeks or longer if I’m able to continue progressively overloading. Once my strength or progressive overload starts to stall for a couple weeks, I’ll rotate to a different variation of the excersise, then repeat the process, then switch back to the original excersise once I start to plateau the second time. I find this effective from my personal experience

I do believe that changing to a different variation can help you to strengthen different stabilizer muscles and recruit different muscle fibers as the angle/range of motion can be a bit different—but i personally don’t like changing my excersises too frequently as it makes it much harder to gauge progressive overload

 

[Anabolix8]

My knowledge of John Meadows' approach to training is that he often would change exercises throughout a program. This differs to the approach of holding an exercise constant throughout a program.

Obviously if the exercises for a given muscle a changing frequently then progress can be measured for that exercise but seeing an increase or decrease in performance.

However, are there actually any pitfalls to this approach given ultimately you are still stimulating the same muscle?

e.g week 1 uses bench press for a chest exercise, next week this is removed and it is incline dumbbell press.

The pitfall is mainly tracking progression. Muscles may still get stimulated, but constantly changing exercises makes it harder to know if you’re actually improving or just adapting to new movements.

John Meadows used exercise variation more for joint health, stimulus quality, and avoiding stagnation, not because progression stopped mattering.