Rotating Exercises Is Overrated

I often hear people claim that rotating weight room exercises or rotating drills on the field or the court is an integral part of every athlete's program. I disagree with this. Rotating exercises/drills should only act as a minor complement to your training. This is because in order to see the true, true benefits of doing a certain drill or a motion, you have to work hard on it for a prolonged period of time! When you try out a new drill or exercise, it takes 3 weeks at a minimum to just get decently skillful at the movement itself, and upwards of 10 weeks for noticeable adaptation (no study to cite, from personal experience). Therefore, exercises should be rotated only after a prolonged period of hard and purposeful training.

The main culprits who advocate rotating exercises/drills constantly are the conjugate fanboys. For those of you unaware, 'conjugate' is a training system first developed by powerlifting coach Louie Simmons and is characterized by frequently rotating main movements in order to prevent adaptation. The reason conjugate doesn't work for most people is that conjugate was made for enhanced lifters (athletes who use PEDs). Natural lifters take longer to adapt to the same stimulus. Plain and simple.

I do not thing rotating exercises is completely worthless. At the end of each 10 week training block, I may switch out 1-3 exercises/drills if I feel they are going stale or if I just don't enjoy them or see their benefit even after 10 whole weeks. However, I will very, very rarely rotate main motions (think squats, flying sprints etc.). Usually, I only rotate accessory exercises. But most of my clients go block after block with the exact same training program and continue to make great gains. But the idea that you need to rotate exercises every 3,4,5 or 6 weeks is completely overplayed and not very valuable.

As a final note, if you do rotate exercises, please do not do it in the middle of a training block. Rotating exercises at that time may create side-effects that will impact the rest of the training of the block, and may impact the PRs you set at the end. So rotate exercises at the start of a new training block!

-Prem