Keep your muscles guessing.

Dont get sucked into the same old, same old.

By confusing your muscles, you get the most out of every workout.

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But is muscle confusion really a thing?

Heres what you really need to know when it comes to muscle confusion and structuring your workouts.

There issomebit of truth to muscle confusion.

One of the tried-and-true tenets ofstrength trainingis to add challenges to continue to see results.

Once it adapts to handle a stimulus, it doesnt have the need to adapt any further.

Enter the dreaded workout plateauwhen youre stuck at a certain level and cant seem to get past it.

Think about it this way.

You run a target 10-minute mile and do 10push-upsevery day.

At first it might feel pretty challenging.

But you keep running that same 10-minute mile and doing those 10 push-ups.

Of course, if youre trying tomaintaina level of fitness or overall health, thats okay, he notes.

After all, your goal there isnt to progress.

Its to stay the sameand if you like what youre doing, whats the harm in sticking with it?

And to do that, you have to keep challenging yourself.

But heres where muscle confusion fails.

You maythinkyou are, though, becausethe workouts probably leave you super sweaty and spent.

They feel fatigued at the end of each workout, she says.

But if you track them over a period of time, they arent making substantial improvements in their fitness.

(While the moves target much of the same muscles, theyre performed differently and with different loads.

This challenges muscles differently and can hinder the process of progressive overload.)

As a result, your neurological system gets more skilled at a given exercise.

These are the newbie gains you might hear about.

After all, your body doesnt necessarily know how long you plan to stick with a given exercise.

And if an exercise is just a fleeting thing, why spend the energy building muscle?

Its easier to just let the neurological system handle things.

This is when your muscle cells grow, become stronger, and your body composition shifts.

Reinvent the wheel before your muscles have really even adapted and youre not really spurring your muscles to grow.

Ditto with your connective tissues, bones, heart, and lungs.

But what if youliketo switch up your workouts?

If thats you, theres absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Its your workout, so you want to see to it youre doing something you enjoy.

But if you get bored easilyandhave fitness goals like building strength, endurance, or muscle?

You still dont have to sacrifice workout enjoyment for progress.

And how you structure or plan your workouts can make a difference.

Perkins recommends setting a weekly plan for yourself.

Maybe one day youll workupper body,lower body, orfull-body strength.

Another day, maybe youll docardiooryoga.

For instance, maybe you progress from a goblet to barbell squat.