The Importance of Exercise Variation: Why Changing It Up Makes You Better
Introduction
When it comes to training, repeating the same drills or lifts will improve your fitness—but it won’t unlock your full potential. That’s where exercise variation comes in.
I realized how effective variation is when I began to use Eastern European training methods. These programs didn’t just shift volume and intensity—they systematically changed up the exercises themselves.
The result? Faster, more consistent gains in strength, speed, and coordination for better transfer to sport movements.
Variation in training isn’t just about keeping things interesting. It plays a critical role in how athletes learn, move, and adapt.
In this post, we’ll break down what exercise variation really means, why it works, and how to use it to elevate performance.
What Is Exercise Variation?
Varying exercises and how they’re performed is based on practice variability In motor learning. It means changing up the movements in a skill or exercise so your body and brain are prepped to adapt. Think: using different sets and reps or changing the range or tempo of an exercise.
These subtle tweaks in lifts and exercises program your nervous system to perform movements more efficiently and adjust to different conditions, which is especially important for training athletes to perform skills where no two attempts or situations are identical.
Examples of variation in sports:
A high jumper keeps the same basic technique but makes adjustments to clear different bar heights.
A basketball player shoots from different spots on the floor.
A golfer swings with differently weighted clubs.
A weightlifter attempts new personal records.
Why Variation Works: The Science Behind It
At the core of exercise variation lies schema theory—a concept in motor learning that explains how athletes create generalized motor programs for the sport skills, lifts, drills, and other training activities. These programs store the “rules” of a skill, but afford the athlete the flexibly to use perform better across similar situations.
Certain features (like timing or sequencing) stay consistent—these are called invariant features of good technique—while parameters (like force or direction) can be adjusted.
By infusing minor exercise variations into your training program, you build a flexible mental blueprint that allows for better transfer to new skills, movements, and conditions, and promotes long-term improvement.
In sport skills, variation IS specificity!
How to Apply Variation in Training
Ready to mix it up? Here are a few practical ways to incorporate variation into your workouts:
Change rep and set schemes: Try 12-10-8 reps instead of 10 reps of 3 sets or 2 sets each of 6-5-4 reps rather than 5 sets of 5 reps.
Alternate exercises: Use front and back squats or bench press with incline press on different days to vary the range of movement.
Vary weighted implements within 20%: Train with slightly lighter or heavier weights to improve sport-specific technique.
Adjust the tempo: Vary the speed of explosive lifts by frequently changing loads while giving maximum effort.
Vary the grip width: Use wide, medium, and narrow grips for the power snatch and hang snatch.
💡 Note: Keep variations within a safe and effective range to avoid disrupting mechanics or increasing injury risk.
How Exercise Variation Improves Coordination
Coordination is the key to athletic performance—it is the most important way the brain and nervous system control how much force an athlete can apply with precision in sports and resistance training.
Coordination happens both within and between muscles to control movements, and exercise variation is key to developing both.
Intermuscular Coordination
Coordination between muscles is how multiple muscles work together smoothly.
Elite athletes have highly developed intermuscular coordination, allowing them to move efficiently and smoothly with less wasted energy. Their muscles work together, rather than fight each other, as is the case for less skilled athletes.
For example, runners with excellent technique show precise intermuscular coordination. They move effortlessly using longer, faster strides and waste little energy on unproductive movements.
With resistance training, the neuromuscular system learns to activate fewer motor units to lift the same weight load, so more motor units are available to lift heavier weight loads. And it feels easier to lift more weight.
So, to develop intermuscular coordination, train with variations of whole body, multi-joint lifts and explosive exercises (power clean, squats) to develop adaptable generalized motor programs that align with sport-specific demands.
Intramuscular Coordination
Now zoom in. Within a single muscle, motor units (the nerves and fibers that cause contractions) need to fire in the right order, at the right time. This is key for both max strength and smooth, controlled motion.
Exercise variation helps train these firing patterns within muscles so athletes can adapt to variety of sport movements and conditions.
Discharge patterns are changes in firing rates within muscles for specific skills. Different exercises require motor units to fire at different speeds and intensities throughout the movements.
In explosive lifts, the speed of muscle firing (called rate coding) is very rapid at first, but then quickly decreases. For example, starting to pull from the floor in a power snatch requires near-maximal firing rates within muscles, but firing rates quickly slow down as the athlete builds momentum. The same is true for the sprint start.
To lift heavier weights, more motor units are recruited to fire faster. There’s some evidence that motor units “pull together” and fire at the same time (called synchronization) for explosions of force to stabilize joints in complex movements where muscle roles change rapidly.
Compartmentalization refers to smaller and independently controlled groups of muscle fibers that may cross over from one muscle to another when athletes move in specific ranges in sports. In essence, compartmentalization allows for a more complex and finely tuned system of muscle control.
For example, the deltoid muscles have three main biomechanical compartments—front, middle, and back.
But researchers have discovered that there are at least 19 functional compartments that work together across three major shoulder muscles that coordinate sport movements.
(Anatomography, CC BY-SA 2.1 JP <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.1/jp/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons)
Examples of lifting variations that target these compartments include the overhead press with a bar or dumbbells, power jerk, push press, and behind-the-neck press. You can also vary the grip width for power snatch and hang snatch to emphasize different functional compartments of the deltoids.
In summary, variation improves coordination within and between muscles. It allows athletes to better adapt to new skills, movements, increased weight loads, and sport conditions. Variation also helps those who may not have the best genetic potential for a sport to adapt to training situations and still succeed.
The Takeaway: Why Variation Drives Long-Term Growth
Incorporating exercise variation into your program is a game changer. It trains you to move more efficiently, adapt to changing conditions, and lift more weight.
It:
Builds adaptable motor programs that transfer to sport.
Enhances coordination both between and within muscles.
Helps break through plateaus in strength, power, and skill.
Gives every athlete—regardless of genetic potential—a better shot at success.
So, if you’re chasing that next PR, striving for smoother movement, or aiming to perform better on the field—change it up. Variation is the difference between doing more and becoming more.
Resources
Haff, G. & Triplett, T. (Eds.) (2021). Essentials of strength training and conditioning (4th ed.). Human Kinetics.
Ives, J.C. (2019). Motor behavior: Connecting mind and body for optimal performance (2nd ed.). Wolters Kluwer.
Sale D. G. (1988). Neural adaptation to resistance training. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 20(5) 135–S145. doi: 10.1249/00005768-198810001-00009
