Still doing the workout your coach gave you back in high school? A lifting split you found in an online forum back in ’07? Or that workout you tore out of a fitness magazine so you could look like Thor?

If you are, you’ve got a big problem and you’re leaving serious gains on the table.

Even if the program worked at first, at this point it’s overused and abused. Just like your favorite pair of lifting headphones. You need to mix things up. Badly.

Change leads to results. Every. Single. Time. It’s simple, but oft neglected.

We’re creatures of habit. When we find something that works, especially if it’s something that we like doing—we stick to it. Before long, we’re looking at plateaus and frustration because we aren’t burning fat or building muscle like we used to.

I don’t care how much you love your preacher curls or how much your massive broceps stretch shirt sleeves because of them, the law of diminishing returns is always at work.

The law’s pretty straightforward. The more you do something, the less effective it becomes. And it’s especially true in the gym. When people do the same things day after day after day, they becomes less and less effective. Doing the same things won’t always get you the same results.

Making your fitness habitual is great. But if you never change anything, your progress will slow. And in time, it’ll stop altogether.

Your program needs change.

More Weight Isn’t Always Enough

Progressive overload is necessary. It’s the backbone of great results. It helps keep you setting PRs and bending bars. But adding more weight isn’t always enough to keep moving forward. Adaptation is.

In the gym, you can see adaptation when you lose fat, gain muscle, get stronger, jump higher, run faster, or learn not to try your favorite pick up lines in between sets. (Seriously, though, does hitting on someone mid workout ever actually work?) Thanks to hundreds of years of practice, the body is really good at adapting.

Remember that Darwin guy you learned about in school? Turns out Chuck was onto something with the whole evolution thing. Given enough time and the right stimuli, animals can make amazing adaptations.

For example, desert king snakes have developed an immunity to rattlesnake venom. No wonder they’re king, right? Another example—flying freaking squirrels. They’re squirrels that have developed a winged membrane to fly (well, glide) from treetop to treetop. It’s amazing.

Humans adapt too. Back in the day, wisdom teeth served a purpose. Anthropologists believe they helped improve the eating efficiency. Which was needed with ancient diets that contained a lot of rough foods like foliage, roots, and nuts. (I think that means keeping your wisdom teeth is paleo. Because science.)

Thanks to modern culture, we’ve changed and adapted. Now we don’t need the extra molars and most people have them removed. Some people never even have wisdom teeth at all.

Adaptations are practical changes to our environment. When you’re in a caloric deficit, your body adapts to meet the deficit and you lose weight. When you’re in a caloric surplus, your body adapts to meet the surplus and you gain weight. It’s pretty straightforward.

Everyone can—and will—adapt. It’s already happening and it’s going to keep happening. But will that adaptation bring you closer to your goals? That’s up to you.

The SAID Principle

Your body will specifically adapt to the demands put upon it. This concept is known as the SAID principle—specific adaptations to imposed demands.

If you want to lose fat, things like strength training, metabolic conditioning, and a caloric deficit are basic demands to help optimize the desired adaptation of getting shredded.

Want to gain muscle instead? High volume strength training, conditioning, and a caloric surplus are basic demands to help optimize your desired adaptation of getting yolked.

Looking to improve athletic performance? Hiring Eric Bach, training power, and eating carbs are basic demands to help optimize your desired adaptation of athleticism.

Let’s say you’re crushing your training and nutrition program. At first you saw great results. Then you hit a nasty plateau and the results have been stagnant.

You’re so close to your goal you can almost taste it. But no matter how dialed in you get with your program, you can’t break through the plateau. Why? Your body has already adapted to the imposed demands. Because your body’s spent months adapting to your program, your results flatline.

It’s okay, though. The ticket back on the gains train is simple. Use change to see new adaptation (read: results).

Forcing Adaptation: Your Key To Always Get Results

Results are simply the manifestation of adaptation in action.

When results taper, it’s an important sign that your imposed demands no longer require the same level of physiological adaptation. Impose new and/or different demands and you’ll stimulate change. You’ll stimulate adaptation. More importantly, you’ll stimulate gains.

The more drastic the change, the more drastic the adaptation will have to be to meet the changing stimulus. But I’m not suggesting you abandon your workout and start program hopping.

Even simple changes can be enough to keep you progressing. Here are 4 simple ways to make little changes in your training that lead to big changes in your progress:

1. Try new variations.

Variations for any given lift are seemingly endless. Take deadlifts for example. You’ve got the conventional deadlift, sumo, trap-bar, Jefferson, suitcase, single-arm, single-leg, snatch-grip, block pulls, deficit deadlifts, rack pulls…you get the idea. Running out of options is an impossibility.

Variations are one of the simplest ways to change up any program.

Switch up your hand placement on the bench press. Try pulling sumo if you normally pull conventional. Give front squats a go instead of your usual back squats. Any variation offers a new training stimulus, a change, and progress.

2. Switch up your equipment.

I love the big lifts and live for loading plates on a bar. But recently I’ve been doing nothing but bodyweight exercises. The results have been amazing.

I even had a friend tell me I was looking bigger. (Don’t think you can build muscle with bodyweight exercises? Try adding a few sets of 10 second front levers before your pull ups and watch what happens to your lats.)

Doesn’t matter if you normally use bars, bells, or bodyweight. Mix things up and spend a month training just as hard with different equipment. When you head back to your bread and butter, you’ll be even stronger.

3. Flip your sets and reps.

This one is simple and straightforward. If you usually do 4 sets of 8, try 8 sets of 4 instead. Normally doing 10 sets of 2? Do 2 sets of 10. Be sure to increase or decrease the weight accordingly. Don’t do this if it doesn’t actually change anything—duh. (I’m looking at you 5 sets of 5).

Flipping your sets and reps doesn’t take much thought. But it still gives your workouts and results the change they need.

4. Go outside and play.

When was the last time you went outside and played? Like just for fun. Let’s bring it back. Go play a game of basketball, two-touch football, soccer, take a hike, or go bike riding. Go do anything active and fun. This is particularly effective during a deload. I mean, if you aren’t picking up heavy things and putting them down you should go do something else that’s fun.

Brush the dust off your old tennis racket or book a round of golf at the country club. Make time to go outside and play more.

They say that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. When it comes to lifting weights, it’s quite opposite. Because of the law of diminishing returns, doing the same thing won’t always get you the same results.

Not knowing this can kill your progress and land you stuck on a seemingly insurmountable plateau. But knowing this allows you to use change to always get results.

Power Primer 2.0: Results Done For You

To maximize your results, your program needs change. Eric Bach’s latest program gives you everything you need to get amazing results, build athletic muscle, shed pounds of fat, and unleash your inner athlete.

The change you need to keep getting results are worked into the program itself.

The Power Primer is a top notch program that will get you elite results.

Eric is one of the smartest guys in the fitness game. I look up to him. I’ve trained with him. And he always blows me away.

He’s done it again with The Power Primer.

You get…

• everything you need to develop a more powerful, athletic, and leaner body through high-performance training.
• a comprehensive Four-Week workout to build athletic power, with a step-by-step guide to take your training to the next level.
• the what, and more importantly the why, behind how training for performance is important to building your ultimate high-performance body.
• Three 12-week programs. Including the Athletes’ Hypertrophy Program, Fat Loss, and Athlete Strong.
• A full video library so that you can train hard, smart, and injury free.

 

Altogether, that’s 36 Weeks of programming, a video guide, plus an optional diet guide. All for less than you spend on Chipotle.

Here’s the best part… The Power Primer is 50% off.

But the sale ends this week. So act fast and get your copy before it’s too late.

When Eric told me how much he was charging for the program, I was floored. It’s an unbelievable deal. Don’t miss out.

Get The Power Primer and unleash your inner athlete.