Cara Kempf is a certified personal trainer with the Fitness Zone in Carmel and a group fitness instructor with NIFS in downtown Indianapolis. She can be contacted at fitnessblog@theindychannel.com.

Let's face it. Any workout becomes boring when you repeat the same techniques and core exercises day after day. How are we ever to stay motivated? Well, there is another reason to try to keep yourself motivated, as well as change up your routine -- your muscles won't work quite as efficiently when they get "bored".

When stressed, your muscles have to find ways in which to adapt, and as you grow stronger that is just what they are doing. However, after a certain point the muscles have adapted so well that repeating the same exercises becomes no tough task for them. You have to keep them guessing in order to throw off your stress adaption system.

If you change the way you work out (even slightly), your muscles will never know what hit them, and you will continue to make gains. One way to change a drab weight workout is to train unilaterally -- this means training one side of the body at a time. Although this method may take a little more time, you will find that there are lots of benefits to unilateral training:

Isolates muscles more efficiently than training both sides at the same time.

Increases the strength of the inactive side.

Increases blood flow more than two-limbed training.

Creates more muscle involvement due to bilateral deficit, which means that the total weight you can lift with each limb individually is greater than the weight that you can lift with both limbs together. Working limbs individually loads the muscles more.

Shock your muscles with new techniques -- they get bored just as easily as you do!

(Fitness RX, 2004)

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