When beginning an exercise routine you are typically indoctrinated into the plan by learning several new (often made up) terms and catch phrases. However, some at home exercise routines are truly based in science and use the knowledge of their creators to educate you about terms and concepts that are well known in the fitness community. Muscle confusion is one of those terms.

Often used in the body building world, muscle confusion is a concept that is not new. It simply refers to using different exercises and movements to keep your muscles “on their toes”. Anyone who has ever tried to lose weight knows about “plateaus”. If you hit a plateau in your weight loss journey, you have come to a place where your body has adjusted to the exercise routine you have been doing, and refuses to progress further.

Once your body and your muscles become accustomed to being used in a certain way, they stop responding so eagerly. This means that as time goes on your weight loss will slow dramatically or even come to a screeching halt.

By confusing your muscles or by constantly changing the routine, your muscles have no time to get accustomed to repetition. Utilizing muscle confusion in your weight loss goals allows you to consistently reach goals and blast through any potential plateaus.

Celebrity trainer Tony Horton embraces the power of muscle confusion and uses it as a focal point of the P90X system. By incorporating 12 very different workouts, he has developed a superior system that will keep your muscles guessing from day to day.

With P90X you will move through a great variety of fat blasting workouts every week. You may start out with Kenpo followed by Shoulders and Arms or Back and Biceps. The next week you may go through Core Synergistics, Plyometrics, and the ever-powerful Ab Ripper X.

Not only does the variety of workouts in P90X keep your muscled confused, it keeps you interested. Workouts get old and it is easy to get bored with doing the same thing every week. The P90X system works for the benefit of your muscles as well as in the interest of you maintaining the program.

Understanding how your body responds to exercise is an important tool in the battle of weight loss. It’s true that knowledge is power and when you really understand the science behind the movements and workouts, you are more likely to want to stick it out. Based in real science and tested by bodybuilders and fitness fanatics, muscle confusion is the real deal and not some weight loss gimmick.

A little confused by what Muscle Confusion actually is? Well, lets break it down and see why P90X takes advantage of this strategy. The body has a tendency to adapt very well to stresses on the system, including exercise. Professional athletes train in “blocks” which consist of working out certain muscle groups in a particular way followed by a recovery phase. As you progress through the phases of each block, the goal is to alter your routine so that the body has difficulty adapting and thus you continue to get results.

The better shape you’re in, the quicker your body can adapt, so you must constantly be moving into the next phase or block. The process of continuously changing up your exercise routines is called Muscle Confusion and P90X utilizes this technique as the heart of the program.

As your body adapts it strives to achieve efficiency. The more efficient you are with any given task the easier it is to accomplish that task, and the less it really affects you, so your results hit a road block, in the P90X program this phenomenon is called the Plateau Effect.

Once you hit that plateau you have to change things up and start in on another block. The recovery phase of each block allows the body to heal and get stronger for the next block. With this technique the P90X system allows you to increase the intensity of each block, and maximize the results you get during the time you spend on your daily workouts.