Muscle confusion: Hey biceps, you'll never guess what's next - The Globe and Mail

Does it work or not? Research is mixed.

Muscle confusion: Hey biceps, you'll never guess what's next - The Globe and Mail:

There's plenty of science to support muscle confusion's claims, says Matt Heath, a neuroscientist in the school of kinesiology at the University of Western Ontario.

“It's very, very well established in the cognitive sciences, this idea that practice” he says. “It's not just about muscle strength when you're lifting a weight. It's about the strategy you employ in order to recruit all the different … motor neurons that ultimately go on to fire off and tell the muscle to contract. You tell those motor neurons more efficiently how to fire and that's just communicated to the muscle, and so therefore the muscle can produce more force allowing you to lift more weight.”"

and on the other side:

"You probably have to do the same thing over and over again for probably six to eight weeks before you actually adapt really well to that fitness regimen,” says Robert Vigars, a professor of sports biomechanics at the University of Western Ontario. “If I keep mixing up my routines, so much that I'm only blitzing one particular muscle group periodically, that muscle group's not going to develop that much.”"