Welcome to the Get Fit Guys quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Ben Greenfield. I'm the Get Fit Guy, and today you're going to learn how to vary your workouts to get the best results.

Whether your goal is fat loss, muscle gain, performance enhancement, or longevity. Study after study has proven that

paying attention to something called the said principle is one of the most important things that you

can do. Simply put, the said principle stands for specific adaptation to imposed demands and is based

on the common sense idea that your body eventually adapts to the

demands that you are placing on it. And because of this, you must constantly throw curveballs

at your body through workout variations, exercise variations, and intensity variations.

But when it comes to varying your workouts, how do you know what to change and when to change it?

And what is more important to change your entire workout, your exercises, or your intensity?

Now, a recent study that was published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research

looked into the question of what's more important to vary up your exercises or your intensity. In this study,

researchers looked at the effects of four different training methods on the muscle responses

of the quadriceps, the leg muscles, and the maximal strength in the back squat, a good

measurement of leg strength. During a 12-week time period, they split study participants into five

different groups. They had one group do constant intensity and constant exercise, in this case

eight repetitions of a squat exercise. Group two did constant intensity with varied exercises,

performing the squat, deadlift, lunge, and leg press exercises, but also with eight repetitions, hence the constant intensity.

Group 3 did varied intensity, constant exercise, in which they did the squat exercise but varied reps and did anything from six to ten repetitions.

Not done yet. Group four did varied intensity, varied exercise, performing the squat, deadlift,

lunge, and leg press exercises with variations of six to ten repetitions. And finally,

Group five was either unlucky or lucky, depending on how you look at it, because they were a control group and they didn't do anything at all.

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