The other day, one of my private training clients, let’s call him “Ben”, came to me with a gripe.

He LOVED the results he has been getting from our kettlebell workouts. But his complaint was that we were doing too much of the same thing. We have been working on the same routine for about three weeks, and he was getting a little bored.

Now, as a fitness professional, I know what is best for Ben and his goals – and that is to stick with the same program framework for at least a couple more weeks. He has been making progress, and has not hit a plateau, so there is no reason to switch things up. He just needs to get tough 🙂

BUT – I also am very careful to listen to my clients, and I want to do my best to keep them happy, having fun, etc. So we decided to introduce some of what Pavel calls “same-but-different” programming into the mix. We stuck with the same basic workout framework, but did variations of some of our exercises to change things up and keep them interesting. This was a great solution for Ben. He started enjoying his workouts again, and in fact started making even FASTER progress because of it!!

 

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For this approach to work though, you have to do it in a very specific way. You can’t just go substituting exercises willy-nilly. You have do switch out and progress to moves that are “same-but-different”.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say that your workout calls for a kettlebell press. What you can do is different versions of this press.

So let’s say that the first day of your routine calls for a double kettlebell press.  You’re doing your double press as part of a superset or by itself or whatever. There are all kinds of variations you can do of those presses.

One variation is an alternating press.

You can do alternating double kettlebell presses.  

You can also do, for example, a see-saw press. That’s where you take both of your ‘bells and one is coming down and the other one is getting pressed up. That’s one of my favorite press variations right there.  That’s a tough one.

Another option is a walking see-saw press. So you do that see-saw press but you take a small step forward, press on the right, take a small step forward and press on the left. Repeat that for reps.

You can use this concept with MANY exercises.

Another good example is with kettlebell swings. You could be doing two handed swings, one hand swings and hand-to-hand swings.

You can do it with body weight exercises. For example you can do squat thrusts which is like a burpee without a push up or a jump. You could do a burpee without the push up. You can do a burpee with a push up.

This simple concept can make a HUGE difference in your training.  I use it in my personal workout planning as well as with my training clients on a daily basis, and it works great.  I hope you can dig it and work it in to your programming to see some increased results!

Train hard, and talk soon –

Forest

 

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