Keeping Your Muscles Confused!

[freak daddy]

I find muscle confusion to be a very important part of my training. I've been doing confusion sets for years and I feel it has kept me from ever reaching a plateau. Here are some of my confusion ideas.
Super Set Confusion-Lets use Incline D.bell presses and Flat D.bell Flyes as an example. Let's do 3 sets. The Incline Presses I'll pyramid 12/10/8 going up in weight. The Flyes I'll do a reverse pyramid. 8/10/12 going down in weight.
Drop sets- Let's use Tricep pushdowns for an example. I like to start with my lightest set first with 15 reps, then go up in weight and down in reps until I can't do another.
I do this 4 week training routine which is really weird but here goes.
Week 1-Heavy with reps 8/6/4/2
Week 2-Super sets with med weight 12/10/8
Week 3-Tri-sets-with med weight-12/10/8
Week 4- Giant sets- Light weight 20/15/12
Then I'll go on my next 8 wek training cycle. I find this really confuses your muscles.
Any thought and ideas?

 

[Sassy69]

I like to fake them out -- I say "Ok kids, we're doing bis today", and then run over to the squat rack before they catch on!

 

[SteelWeaver]

Wow, you've never hit a plateau? And you keep growing! Wowee!

I hit a very frustrating plateau once, but it was because my e-mail trainer at the time, who was in another country, didn't respond well to my complaints about spinning my wheels. Since we parted ways, I've made great progress.

Anyway, so you do tri- and giant sets on every muscle group ... so this means you're doing at least four exercises per muscle group, right? Or do you add in more exercises on the days you plan tri- and giant sets? How many sets total do you do?

It looks really intense. Do you make good strength gains doing so many super-, tri-, and giant sets? I tried tri-sets for all my workouts 2 weeks ago, and am planning to throw them in every 3rd workout or so per muscle group. I'm guessing that keeping in heavy, low reps for the other one or 2 weeks will keep my gains up there (not that up there is very high - ha ha).

The tri-sets were very hard work, and I think I was SO focussed on DOING them, finishing them, that I didn't pay the keen attention that I usually do to form. How's your form on them?

Harder than those, somehow, were spatterson's lateral d/b shoulder raise drop sets!! I could only crank out 3 of the 5 total sets that make up ONE set. I've never had a burn like that in shoulders!!! Funny, though, my shoulders weren't stiff after that ...

A lot of people say you shouldn't change things up too much too often, because it interferes with the progressive overload principle. I wonder if that applies if you're using the same exercises, but changing the intensity?

By the way, thanks for your answer over on your intensity thread. And nice pics - sorry, I only looked at them after posting - what are your tattoos?

 

[freak daddy]

I like to fake them out -- I say "Ok kids, we're doing bis today", and then run over to the squat rack before they catch on!

LMAO!

 

[freak daddy]

Oh, Mr. Freak, PLEASE put your calves up. Rob isn't doin it for me.

I'll think about it . Could you be a little more persuasive?