When you are working out to build more muscle mass, it can take some time until you find a routine that really fits you. Because of this, many people don’t like to change their training routines. You get used to your workout and switching to a different one just seems like too much bother.

Unfortunalely, if you always stick to the same routine, you’re seriously hindering your own progress. In this post, I want to give you some muscle building tips and explain the concepts of inter- and intramuscular coordination and talk about how you can prevent plateauing in your workout without having to give up your favourite exercises.

If you always do the same routine and the same exercises, your progress will stagnate. Actually, it may well be that you keep making progress in terms of strength, but your muscles will stop increasing in size. This is due to three factors: Intramuscular coordination, intermuscular coordination and habituation.

Intramuscular coordination is the coordination of the individual fibers in your muscles. If the fibers in the muscle all contract and relax in sync, then you are producing more muscle power, without your muscle necessarily being very big. Basically, good intra-muscular coordination means that you are moving your muscles efficiently. Of course, this is a very good thing, especially if you’re training for a particular sport (where performance is more important than muscle size). However, if all your training for is increased muscle size, then improved intramuscular coordination isn’t really a great benefit, for you.

Intermuscular coordination is the coordination between different muscles in your body. For example, when you do a simple movement like bending your arm (think: biceps curl), there are two components to that: one the one hand, a muscle is contacting and on the other hand, the antagonist of that muscle needs to relax. The more in sync and completely the antagonists of each muscle relax, the higher your intermuscular coordination. In other words: Good intermuscular coordination means that your muscles aren’t holding each other back, when you are doing particular movements.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with having good intermuscular coordination. But once again, it means that you can gain strength without growing your muscles.

If you constantly do the same few exercises, your muscles learn to do those specific movements as efficiently as possible. Muscular coordinations improve and habituation sets in. If your goal is to build up muscle mass quickly, then you want to switch up your routine before this kind of stagnation sets in. By mixing up exercises and routines, you keep delivering new growth-impulses and your muscles are forced to adapt in a more basic manner, by increasing in size.

Of course, if your goal is to improve your performance in a particular sport, that’s a different story. In this case, increased muscular coordination are welcome. However, they only really matter for your sport-specific motions, not some random motion you make in a workout-machine.

Here’s the simplest way to switch your routine: Simply change the order in which you perform the exercises. Same routine, different order. If you give it a try, I bet you’ll be surprised at how much of a difference it can make.