There is an old adage, “variety is the spice of life.”

It is not only the spice of life, but also a critical component of a successful training program.

• It keeps you from getting bored.
• It keeps your body from adapting too much to what it is doing, leading to plateaus. While practice makes perfect, fooling around speeds, reps, sets, and environment keeps the body challenged while still allowing it to excel at what it’s doing.
• It keeps you from getting hurt (repetitive use syndrome, anyone).
• It keeps your kids from getting hurt. Too much specialized (single-sport) training too young in life is more likely to lead to injury, burn-out, and inability to compete than just letting your kid play and learn the basics of movement and motor coordination. (Recent study on ScienceDaily)

This week, change things up. If you are used to doing 3 sets of 5, do two sets of 10 (if you can safely). If you are used to doing sets of 25 kettlebell swings, do sets of 20 but reduce your rest time. Head outside. Play music. It’s up to you!

You can get more training progression ideas here, and motivation to keep a training log here. But, mostly…

Change it up, make it fun, make it interesting.