by May Plaige

Created on: October 18, 2008   Last Updated: February 02, 2009

Imagine a basketball player who spends his entire workout, every day, running sprints up and down a basketball court. His legs become toned, his heart strong, and he soon becomes the fastest sprinter on his team.

Game day comes, and when his team gets to take the ball out, he sprints faster than every player on the court to his basket. He receives a long pass, is in the perfect position for a slam dunk, but, oh no! When he jumps for the hoop, he can't get high enough, and in his surprise, he misses the basket.

What went wrong? He trained so hard! His legs are strong from all the sprints, so why couldn't he reach the basket?

The problem here was, obviously, a lack of exercise variety. Though this is an extreme example, many people don't realize that when their own workout routine lacks variety, they suffer in a similar way. By doing the same routine every time you work out, you exercise the same muscles using the same motions. You may develop these muscles and become better and better at doing those particular exercises, but eventually, your muscles become accustomed to the work, and you will reach a plateau which you cannot rise above. Excerxise variety prevents this in many ways:

Keeping Your Muscles Challenged

Remember when you first started driving? It was probably a bit of a challenge to get the hang of controlling that rolling machine, braking smoothly, and parallel parking. Back then, it was a test of your skill every time you got behind the wheel, but now driving is second nature to you. Your muscles get used to the work you put them through in a similar way, and they, too, will reach a point where they go on "auto pilot" and your workout no longer challenges them.

To avoid reaching this plateau and effectively allowing your progress to flat-line, it is necessary to incorporate exercise variety into your workout routine. Instead of always doing the same crunches to work out your abs, do crunches sometimes, use a medicine ball every few workouts, and rotate between different abdominal machines and apparatus when you can. By changing up the type of motions, your abdominal muscles won't become "used" to crunches. Instead of developing abs that can only do crunches, you can develop abs that are toned from all directions because of your various abdominal exercises.

Reaching Higher Levels of Fitness

The same goes for cardio workouts and losing weight. If you run once around the park every day, eventually you will hit a finishing time that you just can't beat. At that

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