This ad, and many other marketing gimmicks are grossly over-simplifying the body. Sure, our bodies are adaptive mechanisms. And switching exercises to "confuse" you system may work for maintaining muscle while in a calorie deficit, as muscle maintenance does not take much to achieve.

However, for muscle building, not so much. I mean, progressive overload is one of the primary components of hypertrophy. This means, you add weight above and beyond that of what your body is used to. As your body gets used to the new, higher weight, you up the weight again. This keeps your body in a constant state of adapting. Part of this adaptation process is hypertrophy and strength, to keep up with the higher, and higher weights.

Follow me?

So, in a sense, simply adding weight to the bar on a consistent basis is a form of "muscle confusion." But is allows for a base in your program to build upon, hence, maintain progressive overload. On the flip-side, going into the gym and doing whatever you feel like just to "confuse" the muscles doesn't make sense when you take the above into account.

Confuse the muscle too much by totally throwing out the law of progressive overload, and I think you will be doing things, sub-optimally at best.

Same goes for cardio, as in, progressive overload applies to cardio too. You can't pick a set pace, distance, and heart rate and expect it to give you the same results forever. Your body will adapt to this "stress" in order to make it easier. The easier it becomes, the less you "get" from the exercise.

This is why a progression from low intensity steady state cardio into higher intensity steady state cardio, interval training, and eventually high intensity interval training is called for in most cases.

This thread is becoming more than, "you don't have to starve." I think it is filled with some great information, but I think the title should be changed to something else, if that is possible Mods? Especially since it is a stickie.

__________________
My Blog -- My Journal -- My Photos